SIXTY young people from across Central Bedfordshire recently took part in the MORE 16 and MORE Drive courses to improve their driving knowledge and skills.

Three workshops, covering driving skills, maintenance and safety, were run by vehicle inspectors and collision investigators from Bedfordshire Police, Bedfordshire and Luton Fire and Rescue Service, Three Shires Driving School and Millbrook’s proving ground and offered real-life experience from professionals at the top of their field.

The MORE 16 programme gave 16 year-olds their first taste of driving on a Millbrook track, whilst also offering guidance to parents on choosing a driving instructor and on how to help their teens when practising. Parents attending even receive a high-speed passenger ride around a track with a Millbrook pro-driver with competition history in motorsport such as rallying or racing.

MORE Drive offered 17 to 24 year-olds, who have already passed their driving test, the chance to drive on a skid pan and experience ABS braking systems. As well as practising emergency stops at speed to demonstrate the distance it takes to stop at varying speeds.

Twenty-year-old Dani Page who attended the MORE Drive course said: “It was a great way to learn about real dangers on the road and how to deal with these situations when faced by them. I now have a greater knowledge of a wide range of hazards, how to control a car in a skid and in emergencies to what to do in the event of an accident.

“This knowledge was gained from hands on experience with professional drivers and demonstrations from Police collision investigators and the Fire and Rescue Service. It has changed the way I view things and given me an insight in how easily an incident can occur and what I could do to avoid any situation that I may encounter.”

Councillor Budge Wells, Deputy Executive Member for Sustainable Communities Services, said: “The MORE programmes are a great way for our young people to learn new skills and improve their driving ability.

“I am delighted that demand for the courses has been so high. Everyone who attended took away useful new skills and a better appreciation of what it means to be a safe and responsible driver.

“Courses will run again on March 3 and 4 and it would be wonderful if as many of our young people as possible could attend.”

For more information on either the MORE 16 or MORE Drive programmes, or to attend the events in March, email roadsafety@amey.co.uk.

]]> 1.3548764 Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/trading_standards_scam_emails_warning_1_3548730

INCIDENTS of scam emails being sent from hacked email accounts is on the rise, says Buckinghamshire’s Trading Standards team, who are reminding members of the public to be aware.

The fake emails, which look like they have been sent from the genuine email address of a friend or a family member, are sent to all addresses in the address book of the hacked email account. The email will usually be titled “I need your help” or “I’m in trouble”, and will ask the recipient to send a ‘loan’ in excess of £1,000. The cause of these types of emails is usually that the sender’s email address has been hacked into by a cyber criminal.

Martin Phillips, Cabinet Member for Community Engagement, said: “If you receive an email of this nature, we advise you to try to establish if your friend or family member really is in need of help. If it’s your email account that has been hacked into in this way, contact your email service provider who will be able to restore your email address for you.”

All major web-based email service providers are aware of the problems with account hacking and now offer a system to quickly restore email addresses if they are hacked.

For more help on email scams check with your email service provider or visit the Trading Standards webpage at:

http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/bcc/trading_standards/coldcalling/scams_cons.page?

]]> 1.3548730 Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:43:06 +0000 http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/gordon_cooks_up_interest_in_leighton_firm_1_3548356

A LEIGHTON firm exhibiting at a national leisure show were delighted to have controversial celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey as their guest.

But it’s a good job the Events Incorporated team didn’t ask the mighty mouth chef to whip up a tasty dish because lookalike Martin Jordan makes his living as a Ramsey double.

He joined real life Saturday Live chef James Martin at the stand at the Motorhome, Caravan and Camping

Show at London’s Excel

“We’ve had a great time here,” said Events Inc founder and MD Sonia Dean, “And it was brilliant with Gordon Ramsay from the Chippendoubles.

“We’d only booked him for the Friday but, bless him, he came back as we’d worked out how he could meet James Martin on Saturday – thankfully our Gordon doesn’t do all the swearing like the real one.

“Everyone had been doing double-takes when they saw Gordon at our stand and watching people when they saw the two chefs together was really funny.”

Events Inc, who are based in Stanbridge Road, were exhibiting as part of their links with the Bourne Leisure Haven Owners Exclusive Club and they are about to start their fourth year running the activity roadshow for club members at 34 parks around Britain.

IT was all flipping good fun at this year’s pancake race in Heath and Reach when teams from the village, and the school children, took part.

The event was organised by Heath and Reach WI.

Although the LBO could not raise a team this year your pancake-loving newspaper sent along video reporter Natalee Hazelwood to record the event.

Click on the video icon to view the fun.

EIGHT “luxury camping pods” are being planned at Whipsnade Zoo as charity chiefs aim to make it a year-round attraction.

The Lookout Lodge pods are set to open up a new market for the 80 year-old hilltop attraction.

“Everything we do has mission overlay,” said Zoological Society of London (ZSL) director David Field. He explained that the zoo wants to give visitors experiences that turn them into champions of Whipsnade and to reconnect people with nature.

Mr Field became a champion of nature at a very young age and wants other people to have experiences that do the same for them.

ZSL aims to put 10 per cent of its turnover into conservation efforts around the world. In a good year that can add up to £10million.

Also on the cards this year are a sophisticated indoor play area and refurbishment of the sealion enclosure as the zoo aims to give visitors more of what they want from a day out in the Chilterns.

Last year, some 500,000 people went through the zoo’s gates, with more than ever during the warmer than average winter months.

“We want to encourage people to visit the zoo throughout the year, not just during bank holidays in August,” said Mr Field. He added that by encouraging people to make repeat visits, its conservation efforts can continue into the long term.

> See our video interview with David Field at www.hemeltoday.co.uk/news/business

SO, our whole economic system is suffering from a massive hangover but it’s binge drinking that’s going to get sorted out.

You may wonder whether that nice Mr Cameron has got his priorities right – but there’s no denying that, if he can make some headway, he’ll have made as big a contribution to public health as his unlamented Labour predecessors did by introducing the smoking ban.

There’s a strategy on the way, of course, but for starters the PM has called for bars and supermarkets to help tackle a problem that costs the NHS £2.7bn a year.

But it shouldn’t be about money, and we shouldn’t even be thinking about a ban.

And the PM ought to be looking to recruit far beyond the pint-pullers and grog floggers to help achieve this admirable end.

It’s one of those issues – like seat belts and the smoking ban, which have been great successes, and the ban on using your mobile at the wheel, which is still a boil to be lanced – where the vast majority of us are just waiting for someone to take a sensible lead.

And the way to do it is to make life more difficult for the drinker – and when I say drinker, I don’t just mean the lager-fuelled lout or the alcopop addled teenager – I mean all of us.

I’m fed up of all sorts of expensive measures being put in place to pick up the pieces of other people’s lack of self-control. The aim has got to be to stop people regarding the act of getting completely hammered as an option for a night out, or even a night in.

So here are a few ideas to throw into the mix, for the PM to consider over a relaxing glass of wine one evening.

Number 1, ban all alcopops. Strong drink isn’t supposed to taste like lemonade.

Number 2, restrict the sale of all spirits to people over the age of 25. If I had my way I’d also make it illegal to use mixers to soften the taste of hard liquor, for the same reasons that alcopops have to go, but I do enjoy the occasional gin and tonic so that one will have to stay on the drawing board.

Number 3, by all means introduce a higher unit price for alcohol but don’t penalise those who enjoy a bracer but know when to stop – jack up the pub prices only after the first two drinks, introduce maximum purchase rules in supermarkets and the like just like they have for painkillers these days, and halt the sale of alcohol in containers larger than one litre, especially if we’re talking about super strength cider.

Number 4, forget street pastors and people being paid by the public purse to get drunk and incapable kids home safely. Employ them instead to wander town centres at closing time, corner people who have had a skinful, and paint their faces purple.

The paint should not be permanent, of course, but it should be pretty much immovable for a week or so as evidence of a bender that would last a lot longer, and be a lot more visible, to the world at large than a hangover.

Then it would be for the rest of us to bring peer pressure to bear, and sneer and snigger at the victims for long after whatever memory they had of a good night out had faded. Purple paint would make them pariahs, and we’d soon change their habits.

THE choppy waters have been calmed between the town council and the I Love Leighton Buzzard Group over plans for this year’s Christmas Shopping Weekend.

Things had been frosty between the two since Leighton-Linslade Town Council launched a takeover bid of the showpiece event. But in a series of meetings, the two groups have buried the hatchet and agreed to work together to produce a bigger and better event for the good of the town.

The events sub-committee at the council will recommend to the partnership committee that funding of £15,000 be allocated for proceedings, while I Love LB will continue, alongside the council’s events organiser, to have input into the three-day shopping event to include the Christmas lights switch-on.

For more on this story see the February 21 issue of the LBO.

PLANS are underway to re-locate Leighton’s job centre to Bossard House, in West Street, Leighton, with other Central Bedfordshire services.

The plan is to move in Spring 2012 and move the Job centre out of its current home in Waterborne Walk, into the ground floor with the council’s customer service team - only a couple of minutes away from its current home.

A single storey 30 square metre extention is also planned to create a waiting area. All jobcentre outreach services in Children’s Centres will continue as normal.

It is proposed that all jobcentre services will be transferred by March.

A NEW strategy to increase the number of passengers and staff travelling to Luton Airport by public transport has been announced.

The airport says it wants more than 40 per cent of people travelling to and from the airport to do so via public transport by 2017.

And it wants the proportion of staff travelling alone by car to and from the airport to be 60 per cent or lower by 2017.

Currently, 71 per cent of non-shift workers drive alone.

]]> 1.3541297 Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:01:21 +0000 http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/inside_today_s_issue_of_the_lbo_1_3544651

Headlines:

Left for dead in a bin... Puppy discovered by dog walker had had its leg eaten by its mother

Stabbed five times... Shocking assault by three men at a block of flats in Leighton

Pelted by chocolate eggs... Robbers with a gun threw miniature Easter eggs at a shop worker and then fled the scene

Another big cat on the loose?... Reader speaks of black leopard encounter in the countryside

Food crisis... Charity reveals plight of the homeless in Leighton

Plus:

Great offer: Fantastic £5 European holiday deal

Three pages of the latest village news

Cash in with the LBO: Community can benefit from collecting our Target Stamps

Give us a clue: Can you beat our crossword?

Get the Buzz: Your top guide to the world of leisure.

]]> 1.3544651 Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:25:36 +0000 http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/puppy_left_for_dead_in_bin_1_3544604

Ignorance and panic were blamed for a Leighton Buzzard woman discarding a puppy she believed to be dead in a wheelie bin, Luton Magistrates Court heard yesterday (Monday).

Dawn Foster, 37 of Lammas Walk, pleaded guilty to charges brought by the RSPCA of ‘causing unnecessary suffering to a puppy by placing the animal, which was suffering pain due to an injury, into a wheelie bin thereby exposing the animal to further suffering from pain, cold temperature and blood loss and failing to ensure the puppy was deceased before putting the animal into a wheelie bin exposing it to pain and suffering’.

Magistrates heard how on September 28, 2011, a dog walker had been out in the early hours of the morning and his dog had reacted to screaming coming from a nearby wheelie bin.

The man opened the bin to find a plastic bag containing a soaking wet puppy with a missing front leg inside.

He took the puppy home and made it comfortable then called the RSPCA. A vet said the puppy’s leg had been chewed off and it was in pain, had very low body temperature and suffered blood loss. The puppy had to be euthanized on welfare grounds.

Miss Foster was described in court as of previous good character, with no previous convictions or experience of the court system and was traumatised by her court appearance. Her defence also said she had never been cruel to an animal before and she genuinely believed the pup was dead.

The magistrates took nearly an hour to decide that Miss Foster should receive a fine of £250, plus pay RSPCA inspector fees of £365.91, Vets fees of £28.91 and legal fees of £444.

For the full story see today’s LBO. On sale now.

Central Bedfordshire Council want your views on the Development Strategy, a new planning policy document that will play a huge part in shaping the future of the county.

The Development Strategy will set out how much growth and development will need to be planned for, in areas such as housing, employment and retail. It will also suggest broadly where this should go. At a more detailed level, the Strategy will set out detailed policies to help determine planning applications.

Once adopted, the Development Strategy will replace the current Core Strategy in the northern part of Central Bedfordshire and the Local Plan and Core Strategy in the south.

Work on the Strategy has only just begun, but customer feedback on what the plan should contain is being invited from this early stage.

As part of the consultation the council will be holding four workshops to discuss the Strategy. On March 1 and 6 workshops will be hosted in Dunstable and on March 8 and 14 in Shefford. The workshops will be open to all but places will be limited. If you would like to attend, email at LDF@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk.

There will also be a short questionnaire for people to complete. The survey seeks views on big issues such as the number of new homes and jobs we should be planning for and will be available online at http://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/consultations. Hard copies will also be available from libraries and customer contact centres, or by post on request.

As part of work on the Development Strategy the council is also running a ‘Call for Sites’ exercise where developers, landowners and other interested parties are invited to submit details of sites that they would like to see developed in future. Again, in order to find out more information about the ‘Call for Sites’, please visit our website.

Cllr Ken Matthews, Executive Member for Sustainable Communities Strategic Planning said: “We want Central Bedfordshire to continue to be a great place to live and work and the Strategy should help us to secure this. We know our residents are concerned about how their children and grandchildren will be able to get on the property ladder, how they will get work and whether the character of our communities will maintained in the future. We share these concerns and look forward to working with local people to develop a Strategy that delivers the right balance of protecting our heritage and developing our future.”

The informal consultation will run until March 28. After we’ve gathered the results we will publish a Draft Development Strategy for comment in July 2012.

]]> 1.3541524 Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000