The June meeting of Spalding Business Club features a talk by first aid trainer Nick Hargreaves on the importance and use of medical skills in the workplace.

Mr Hargreaves, lead trainer at Hargreaves First Aid Training which provides training courses to businesses and individuals throughout Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, will also be sharing useful first aid tips and the benefits of having first aid-trained staff within a business.

The meeting takes place at Bookmark Spalding, The Crescent, Spalding, on Thursday, June 2 at 7am, with a cost of £8 to cover the cost of the breakfast provided.

Anyone wishing to attend the meeting should call Ken Maggs on 01775 711333 with your full name, job title and employer, as well as details of any guest(s) you would like to bring along, by May 27.

In light of recent correspondence, I would like to repeat my warning that it would be madness for the UK to leave the European Union.

I have patiently listened and read all the arguments by the many Brexit campaigners, some of which are shamefully presented in these pages by people who should know better.

How is the assertion valid that we spend £350million per week on membership of the EU?

Only by ignoring the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, which currently stands at £4.5million, and EU grants for farming, local government and fishing, is it possible to present that membership costs us anywhere near that figure.

But still the leave campaigners, at the very highest level, continue to present their case this way.

They seem quite content to insult the intelligence of those they wish to convert. Personally, I have heard it all before.

I worked in the Royal Navy for 23 years between 1963 and 1986, and worked with various NATO Navy forces on countless occasions.

What always seemed to raise its ugly head among those in command was the notion that if only we (the British) were in total charge, then everything would be fine.

It was an excuse used by those with seniority to cover their shortcomings and incompetence.

The same foolish argument is being presented by those co-ordinating the Brexit campaign.

In my opinion, it would be foolish to relinquish the opportunity to lead and co-operate in the EU for the benefit of all, in favour of retreating into an isolated position that might mean we surrender the goodwill shared with countries with whom we share common experience and cultural values.

Wake up Britain. Is there a problem with the EU that is unsolvable? Not at all.

Are we to entirely trust the comments of various MPs who seem intent on milking a gravy train of our political making and support? I think not.

Some would prefer to see this country as a big fish in a little pond – that is the real reason these politicians are so vocal. Are they afraid of the future?

Are they afraid of showing real leadership and commitment on a bigger stage?

If we are brave enough, our continued membership can be the only real way forward for the future of this country.

The warm weather arrives, we fling open the windows to enjoy some fresh air ... and then we have to close them again.

Please can someone tell me why, oh why, we have to put up with the disgusting stench from the sewerage works in West Marsh Road?

Yes, it travels all the way across the other side of town, and seems to be worse in the evening.

No-one should have to put up with this and the Environment Agency, South Holland District Council and the powers-that-be should be doing something about it.

A Gosberton motorcyclist is taking on the Longest Day Down Challenge in a bid to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

Dan Mills (42) will on the longest day of the year (June 21) be attempting to ride a motorcycle that cost no more than £300 from Land’s End to John O’Groats in under 24 hours without using motorways.

The engineer decided to 
attempt the challenge as every penny raised goes direct to a very worthy cause,

Dan said: “No-one has completed the challenge on a Honda C90 Step-through and that’s the bike I had found for under £300.

Avoiding motorways, the route will be over 900 miles and, with the bike’s top speed 50mph. So, taking into account at least seven fuel stops, completing the route in under 24 hours will be a real challenge.

Donations can be made at www.justgiving.com/dan-mills2 and you can chart Dan’s progress at www.dans-longest-day-down-on-a-cub.com

Laura Holland, volunteer manager for Cancer Research UK, said: “We are absolutely delighted that Dan has decided to attempt such a great challenge.

“He has been doing lots of preparation and we’re sure he’s going to have an amazing experience. We can’t thank him enough and want to wish him all the very best.”

She added: “Cancer Research UK has made enormous progress in the fight against cancer and continues to do so. However, we have only been able to do this thanks to the dedication and commitment of our volunteers and supporters, without whom we would not be able to fund our vital research.”

For further information about Cancer Research UK’s work or to find out how to support the charity, call 08701 602040 or visit www.cancerresearchuk.org.uk

Not satisfied with causing havoc in Spalding due to problems with the level crossings and the long delays they bring, Network Rail now plans to cut down all the trees, bushes and vegetation adjacent to the railway line and replace them with a fence.

From what I have been able to glean, this is the plan for the entire area from the Little London level crossing towards Spalding railway station, but who knows how far it will spread.

This will affect birds and wildlife, the privacy of dozens of properties and increase noise levels.

We appreciate that if a tree is unsafe it could put at risk the workforce and the safety of passengers, but isn’t this a bit like saying your toe cannot be saved but don’t worry we will cut your leg off to be on the safe side?

If you feel this issue will affect you, then contact your councillor, MP and Network Rail – and make your feelings known.

This has happened in other areas, literally overnight. Once the trees and bushes have been decimated, they cannot be restored, so act now.

Summer seems here with all spring crops drilled, planted and emerging well, writes Stafford Proctor.

Winter sown crops are growing quickly with the yellow flowering of oilseed rape nearly completed and ears of barley emerging, and wheat not far behind – only another two months until harvest starts!

New lives start every few days as the Lincoln Red cows continue calving.

With the exception of some black grass, the farms in south Lincolnshire look great.

Farmers have recently completed their annual task of reporting to the government what crops we are growing and that we are abiding by the highest environmental standards – the modern equivalent of the Doomsday book!

Agricultural support plays a crucial role within farming businesses and generally satisfies its aims of supporting the broader rural community and maintaining a plentiful supply of low cost food.

Sunday, June 5 is Open Farm Sunday. The website lists your local farms; why not visit one and learn more of what happens on your local farms. In south Lincolnshire, Naylor Flowers are open from 11am to 4pm, at Sycamore Farm, Common Road, Moulton Seas End, Spalding PE12 6LF. It will be a fantastic day with tractor trailer tours of flower fields, children’s activities, flower arranging demonstrations and competitions, machinery, live music, art and refreshments.

Knowing Matthew and his team, it will be a special day, and a great opportunity to have fun, learn and enjoy our farms and countryside!

The introduction of daylight saving – moving the clock forward an hour in the spring – caused enormous confusion when in was introduced in 1916.

Despite all the debate about the change, a Sunday newspaper seller set off for Spalding Station two hours ahead of the ‘old’ time – “it turned out that two people had been operating on the clock independently!”

A “small cowkeeper” on the outskirts of Spalding failed to alter his clock so that when the milk seller arrived the cows were just about to be milked, and the milkman was forced to wait an hour and start late on his round.

The “veteran chairman” of the Spalding Board of Guardians, the Rev J C Jones, refused to alter his clocks or watch, but the report says “we noted he was well in time for the meeting of the Board yesterday”.

A couple from a village a few miles outside Spalding drove into the town on Sunday morning “as usual for divine service” and were “greatly astonished” to be told the clock said 11.30 instead of 10.30. They claimed not to have heard anything about the Daylight Saving Act whereas another couple arrived at Spalding Baptist Chapel an hour too soon.

Some village children arrived at Sunday School an hour late and said their father “wasn’t going to put his clock on for nobody” and a number of children were late for school the following day.

The clock keeper at Spalding Parish Church caused alarm when, uncertain whether he had changed the clock to the correct, new time, the clock was struck.

“To hear a public clock in a prohibited area striking defiantly in the middle of the night so startled a policeman that he hurried to the spot to see what was meant by this breach of the Defence of the Realm regulations.” At another church the bell tolled an hour too soon.

The concerns of Mr H C Huet (Spalding Guardian, May 12) and other residents regarding infrastructure to support the large housing developments proposed for Holbeach are rightly justified.

Unfortunately, planning permission given for a new surgery in Church Street does not necessarily mean it will ever happen.

Over the last two years, together with councillors Rita Rudkin and Peter Copeland, I have had meetings with officers from NHS procurement and, while they acknowledge these and other concerns, they have no plans for Holbeach while the two surgeries can continue to accept patients.

This, of course, creates problems for the planning department when considering applications as there is no statutory requirement regarding the NHS to show how the health of a growing population will be accommodated. We continue to fight the good fight.

Former Conservative party leader and cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith has described today’s (Saturday) Vote Leave campaigning in Lincolnshire as “fantastic”.

The Vote Leave battle bus toured the county, with Iain Duncan Smith leading the campaign in Grantham, Boston and Lincoln.

He said: “We’ve had a fantastic reception, things have gone really, really, well.

“A lot of people have been lining up. We’ve been to Grantham, we were in Boston, we’ve been here [Lincoln].

“This has been a phenomenal reception from the people.”

Speaking about the reaction in Boston, Mr Duncan Smith said: “Fantastic. We went to the market there, which was great, absolutely great, loads of people coming to us saying they want to join the campaign.”

And we asked him how leaving the EU would benefit a rural county like Lincolnshire.

He said: “We get back our money. We give £350m a week to the European Union.

“In agriculture subsidies alone every year we give £5bn to the European Union, we only get £2.9bn back. It means £2bn goes off to somebody else.

“We’ll be able to help communities like this in a much better way and more directly as a result of us having our own money.

“And border control means we’ll be able to control migration so you don’t have the pressure on many of the communities in this area.

“The third one - 60 per cent of our laws are now made by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, and we’ll get that back.”

Vote Leave is the official campaign for a ‘leave’ vote in the EU referendum and aims to ‘take back control from the EU and negotiate a new UK-EU deal based on free trade and friendly co-operation’.

I found the article in the Guardian on the accident blackspot (A16/B1166 junction at Crowland) very interesting, and similar to a spot where I live on the A159 near Laughton in West Lindsey.

Since the 1960s, I have repeatedly asked various representatives at the highway department to carry out some positive action to control traffic on the road. Double white lines down the centre of the road would restrict overtaking, while a slower speed limit would help bring the number of accidents down.

By my reckoning, there have been three deaths on this section of the A159 over the years, yet nothing positive has been carried out to send a message to drivers.

As far as I am aware, the county council should have a duty of care to the public in ensuring our roads are as safe as possible.

One wonders how staff can carry out their duties with a mind free of guilt by just trotting out the same well-trodden excuse of not having enough money.

Preventive maintenance is far cheaper in the long term, but I fear the amount of road miles suffering from a quick fix is growing ever longer with every week that passes.

The council appears to take the same approach to road repairs as authorities did in the 1940s, when a lengthman would push his wheelbarrow around with a couple of hundred weight of tar-coated material.

No doubt, there are quite a few readers who can relate this to an area not too far from their own home.

We, the British public were, in 1975, conned by the then Prime Minister into joining the common market.

He said we would all be better off. Of course, in the 1970s, we did not have an immigration problem as we do now. That brings huge problems to our everyday life.

The fact is that now we are being told by David Cameron to believe the same old lies that Harold Wilson told us then.

That we will face mass unemployment, higher food bills and all the uncertainty of a future outside the common market.

Mr Cameron is peddling the same scare tactics. Do not be fooled and conned a second time.

If we vote to stay in, The European Union will have us in a grip of iron forever.

The bureaucrats who head up this organisation will impose more red tape on our government. In other words, they will continue to tell our Government what to do and we will not be able to do anything to change it.

We will have to keep on taking more and more immigration into our already overcrowded island and all the problems that brings.

Our own people will suffer from paying more and more to the dominant EU and won’t have a say about our future.

In short, if we vote to stay in the EU, we will hand our children and grandchildren an uncertain future. We have been lied to for too long.

The only way we can leave future generations of this great country of ours a chance to be great again is to have the courage to vote to leave on June 23.

So don’t listen to the doom makers and the chief scaremonger, the Prime Minister. He is wrong and he knows it.

So be brave, vote leave for a better future.

To leave or not to leave, that is the question.

The decision over the UK’s continued membership of the faltering European Union is not a matter of transitory adjustment to change, if any, but the long-term issue affecting our lives and those of succeeding generations.

The clearly stated aim of the EU is ever closer political union between 28 extremely diverse nations, all with different languages and religions, different cultures, histories and mindsets, different geographical locations and economies – all orchestrated by a huge number of career bureaucrats in Brussels.

What we have to decide is whether we want to submerge our independence and individuality in this polyglot mix, and then decide whether the attempt to build such an empire has any chance of success.

My answer to the first question is an unequivocal no. This is not to say that we should be anything other than good friends or that we shouldn’t co-operate when there are mutual benefits to be had.

My opinion on the second question is that there is no chance that this idea can be successful.

Since the world was opened up a few hundred years ago, the history of mankind has been that of the rise and ultimate fall of empires brought about by the wishes of member countries for independence and self–determination.

There is nothing to be gained by taking part in this doomed exercise.

We should vote to leave in order to protect our independence and our growing economy.

Fire crews were called out to a barn fire off Bridge Road in Long Sutton yesterday afternoon (Saturday, May 21).

The alarm was raised at 4.54pm and crews from Holbeach, Spalding, and Wisbech attended.

More updates to follow.

I’m sure that John Hayter is correct when he comments that the current EU single farm payment system is complex, but life is complicated.

I’m also aware that payments to our farmers are being delayed and am prepared to accept the EU fine figures he quotes.

But isn’t that the result of our Rural Payments Agency’s failure to employ people that are capable of successfully understanding EU legislation?

Let’s sort out our own government agencies before placing all our troubles and woes at the feet of others.

In the meantime, how many farmers will go to the wall as a result of our Rural Payments Agency not being fit for purpose?

I cannot believe that Bourne Academy wants to take over the Sir John Gleed School.

I was so horrified, I went online to vote to stop the academy’s bid.

All schools have their own problems, none more so than the school I attended when I was a boy, which I won’t name. I would have loved to have gone to the Gleed.

Bourne should keep its hands off this school.

It’s time they left the Gleed alone and let the teachers get on with teaching the children.

The headmaster should be given time to turn the school around.

I would urge all parents and interested parties to go online and vote against this takeover.

Spalding Police have reported that youths threw stones at an ambulance on Friday evening.

The incident happened in New Road, Spalding, while the crew was treating a patient.

Thank you to everyone who voted for me as the UKIP candidate for police and crime commissioner.

Lincolnshire gave the closest result for UKIP in the whole country, getting almost 25.5 per cent of the vote, going through to the second preference stage and snapping at the heels of the Conservative winner.

Naturally, I am disappointed that we did not win, but the results show our support is growing in Lincolnshire.

We now have a huge fight on our hands to get out of the EU, which I will be campaigning hard for.

With a no vote, we will be able to control our borders and boost our economy by opening up huge new trade opportunities with the rest of the world.

Police arrested a man on suspicion of murder when his alcoholic partner was found dead after falling down their stairs.

But medical tests proved Linda Bradley (47) died from alcohol poisoning because she had nearly six times the legal drink-drive limit in her blood.

Forensic experts and doctors who examined Ms Bradley decided her injuries were consistent with her falling down the stairs rather than the result of any kind of assault.

It was also revealed that Ms Bradley’s partner, Lee Spicer, had dialled 999 and followed ambulance service instructions on resuscitation after he came home to find Ms Bradley unconscious on the floor in the hallway of their home in Elizabeth Crescent, West Pinchbeck.

Dr Murray Spittal, assistant coroner for south Lincolnshire, concluded Ms Bradley died on April 26 last year as a result of ethanol (alcohol) toxicity but said a head injury resulting from her fall may have contributed to her death.

Dr Spittal read statements from police and doctors at an inquest held yesterday (Wednesday) in Boston.

A statement from Det Chief Insp (DCI) David Cox said Mr Spicer had dialled 999 at 4.12pm and followed ambulance service instructions on resuscitation. East Midlands Ambulance Service paramedics arrived at 4.18pm and Ms Bradley’s death was confirmed at 4.28pm.

DCI Cox said the bulb was missing from the landing light, windows were covered with towels – which stopped daylight getting in – and Ms Bradley was found to be wearing loose fitting, woollen slippers.

He said police had investigated a report of a domestic assault by Mr Spicer on Ms Bradley in March 2014, but that did not result in any charges.

DCI Cox said, when interviewed, Mr Spicer referred to Ms Bradley shortly before her death as going through a bout of heavy drinking, which he described as a “bender”.

A pathology report showed Ms Bradley had 466mgs of alcohol in blood – more than 5.8 times the drink-drive limit – and that reading is within the range associated with fatalities.

The A151 Bourne Road in West Pinchbeck remains closed following a three-vehicle road accident.

Emergency services were alerted about the accident at 7.27am.

Two cars and a van are believed to have been involved.

Road closures are currently in place while the people involved in the collision are assessed and vehicle recovery is carried out. Motorists are asked to avoid the area.

More as we get it.

One person has been taken to hospital after a collision involving two cars and a van in West Pinchbeck earlier today.

It happened on the A151 Bourne Road, between Six House Bank, West Pinchbeck, and Twenty, shortly before 7.30am.

One of the drivers was talen to Peterborough City Hospital where the seriousness of his injuries are still being assessed.

Police put road closures in place while those involved in the collision were assessed and all three vehicles were recovered.

Anyone who saw the collision should call 101, quoting incident number 44 of May 23.

MONDAY 8.50AM: Crash blocking roads in West Pinchbeck

A crash is blocking the A151 Bourne Road at its junction with Six House Bank and Dozen’s Bank in West Pinchbeck this morning, Monday May 23.Police are at the scene directing traffic, but motorists are asked to avoid the area if possible.

More here as we have it...