Happy New Year!

Stirchley Upper/Lord Silkin/Lakeside Academy demolition

Stirchley Upper first opened in 1976, was renamed the Lord Silkin School, was renamed again to Lakeside Academy and has undergone yet another name change to Telford Park School to go with its new building. The demolition crews are making short work of razing the old building!

Happy Holidays

Happy Kwanzaa to all our African friends living and worshiping in Brookside and Stirchley and a belated Happy Christmas, Zeusday, Saturnalia, Yuletide, Winter Solstice, Hogswatch, ChriFSMas and Hanukkah.

Two Brookside residents locked up for drug money laundering

A total of 59 members of a drug gang - some living in Brookside - have been convicted of money laundering and supplying class A drugs.

It's great that some of the drug dealers in our area have been taken off the streets but between the 59, they got just 200 years in prison. That's an average of just 3 years and 4 months each for putting dangerous drugs on our streets and ruining people's lives. But some of the sentences were for 8 or 10 years which means most of the people involved in this drug ring will have escaped prison altogether. Is it any wonder drugs are rife in Brookside if you can expect a slap on the wrist for being part of the supply chain?

Pensioners' Christmas Party

I have declined my annual invitation to the parish council's pensioners' Christmas party as I have done the previous four years I have been a councillor.

The Christmas party is for pensioners, not councillors in their 30s. I'm not in the habit of turning down free meals but in this instance I'm much happier having that money being spent on pensioners than me!

The last I heard, this year's party is fully booked but you can contact the parish council to be put on the reserve list and ask for an invitation to next year's party.