Columns

I am really looking forward to Easter. Getting the children and my wife their Easter eggs, preparing for the Easter egg hunt (hidden by the Easter bunny of course!), it is a exciting time of the year for most people. It is not the time to have a seriously ill pet. Easter presents a variety of dangers for dogs and ...

Last year we saw a lot of ticks. The relatively mild winter this year will have done little to reduce the numbers for this spring. Ticks will start to rise out of the ground in the next two months, when we get the warmer spring weather. Now is a good time to think about tick treatment. Ticks are part of ...

Did you know small dogs are considered to be “geriatric” by the time they are around nine years old and larger breeds can be heading into their senior years as young as five years of age? When your dog becomes a senior it’s important to help keep them healthy and happy in their golden years. This can be done with ...

Thanks to the excellent work of Luke Blackmore at Big Clever Creative Design, the town centre manager’s website went live last week and can be visited at www.spalding.town The website aims to provide local people and visitors to the town information on places to stay and to eat out, local attractions, events and details on all of Spalding’s retail and ...

A few weeks ago we were at home getting ready to start our day. I was in the shower when one of my children said there was a knock at the door. It was one of our neighbours clutching a towel containing a creature that her cat had brought home.Her husband had retrieved the creature from the cats mouth and ...

Recently we attended a celebratory event for the work we have done as part of a project undertaken as part of the Armed Forces Community Covenant. The project involved interviewing many veterans of many conflicts around the world over the last 70 years. We also asked these veterans about their life after service and the difficulties they faced integrating back ...

Along with a number of all-party district councillors I regularly take part in Local Democracy presentations to groups of schoolchildren. One of the questions recently asked was ‘what do you actually do?’ and I thought it might be useful to use my diary to show aspects of what district councillors and particularly cabinet members get up to. So here is ...

On Sunday, February 21, Tulip Radio, in association with Majestic Bingo, will be holding a charity bingo afternoon at the Regent Bingo Club in Westlode Street, Spalding. Tulip Radio is very privileged to be working alongside Regent Bingo Club, helping to raise funds for local Armed Forces: SSAFA, Royal Navy Association, Royal British Legion and the Lincolnshire Regiment. They have ...

by Jess Horn, community development officer at South Holland District Council Timebanking is a great way for people to help others in their community and be rewarded for it in time. It is a simple concept that can have a lasting impact on communities and people’s lives. They are about making things happen, offering people the opportunity to make a ...

Recently we have been presented with a couple of cases in practice that we believe to have been Leptospirosis, with only one case currently being confirmed. This is a bacterial disease that should be routinely vaccinated against in dogs annually alongside a yearly check over by the veterinary surgeon. Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that primarily causes liver and kidney ...

Last week, we had the pleasure of talking to former Spalding Inspector, now Chief Inspector Jim Tyner who dropped round at our studios in the Crescent to tell us about life in Skegness, where he is now based. Recently of course Skegness has been in the national news as one of the sites for the beached sperm whales which have ...

by Coun Roger Gambba-Jones, portfolio holder for place at South Holland District Council You may be aware that South Holland District Council will soon be launching a new pilot garden waste collection service. The much-anticipated scheme starts on April 4 and we will be launching the sign-up process imminently, so keep checking the web for details. Signing up will be ...

Did you know that you might have a prehistoric creature living in your garden? Hedgehogs are one of our oldest native species – they shared the earth with sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths 15 million years ago, and now they snuffle about in our gardens helpfully eating the slugs and snails that damage our plants. Sadly, hedgehog numbers have declined ...

Firstly I would like to wish all Voice readers a very Happy New Year! Hopefully you had a relaxing and fun-filled Christmas with your families and also managed to pick up a bargain or two during the January sales. There are certainly some excellent offers around the town to be had; so if you badly need to update your TV, ...

Whether you make New Year’s resolutions or not we all have things in our lives we would like to improve. Sometimes it is hard to know how to get started or the best way to achieve your goal. Fortunately there is a wealth of great free information available at your fingertips. A common New Year’s resolution is to lose weight. ...

I’d like to start off by wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year. In this column, I’m going to take a look back at some highlights from 2015 and offer a glimpse of what 2016 will have in store. Last year we saw a growth in organised crime in a minority of our licensed retail outlets, but countered this ...

Last time I wrote about a favourite garden visitor, the blackbird. This month I thought it’d be good to look at another familiar feathered friend, the starling. Now, starlings aren’t always everyone’s favourite. Indeed, some people dismiss them as mere noisy black brutes. But do take a second look. For starters, they aren’t black. Their feathers are a deep, glossy ...

Artists in South Holland have a wonderful opportunity to showcase their work in the forthcoming Open Arts competition. The prestigious contest has been running since 1999 and is designed to showcase the work created by professionals and amateurs across the region. Artists can submit their work and an independent panel of judges will choose the pieces which will be displayed ...

The predictions for 2016 in the travel Industry are positive. We believe there will be growth in destinations in Europe such as; Spain, Canaries, Balearics, Greece, Algarve and Cape Verde and then those looking to go further will look at trips that revolve around interpersonal exchanges such as India, Cuba, China, Mexico and Australia. There will also be a growth ...

In these unsettled times with the troubles in the Middle East and the increase in terrorism, it is easy to lose faith in human kind. It is wonderful for me then to see every day the love people have for their pets. I am constantly being told “he is such a lovely dog” or “she is a really beautiful cat”. ...