Cleveleys News

2018 has been another incredible year for Cleveleys News. So many tweets to choose from, but we let our readers decide and here are our TOP tweets, as "liked" and retweeted by YOU. JANUARY The year began with the sad news that Teletubby Tinky Winky had died. Blackpool Tower is lit purple tonight in memory of #TinkyWinky RIP. pic.twitter.com/kbktmytr8R — Cleveleys News (@cleveleysnews) January 23, 2018 FEBRUARY New electronic signs started popping up around Blackpool. A few other people on social media tried to copy us, but this was our original (and obviously, the best) tweet. New electronic signs around Blackpool will give travel advice to motorists. pic.twitter.com/eaSvaeaiDm — Cleveleys News (@cleveleysnews) February 21, 2018 MARCH The news in March was dominated by goings-on at Blackpool FC with a public feud between Owen and Karl Oyston, and bailiffs being called by Valeri Belokon. Owen Oyston "not fit to run football club" says Karl. #Oyst

Blackpool Football Club has been in a right old mess for some years now, and last year owner Owen Oyston appointed his daughter as chairwoman. We managed to get an exclusive telephone interview with her: [telephone interview begins] NC: Hello? CN: Hello this is Cleveleys News. Is that Natalie? NC: Certainly not your honour, I never even met the girl. CN: Sorry, which girl is that? Am I speaking to Natalie? NC: Yes, yes of course. Sorry I got confused there for a moment. CN: Your voice sounds very gruff. NC: Sorry about that, my big floppy hat fell over the mouthpiece and muffled my voice. Is that better now? CN: Not really. Did you say “big floppy hat”? NC: Yes. CN: Is this Owen? NC: [coughs] No. CN: Okay. Well Natalie you’ve been chairwoman of Blackpool FC for a while now. How do you feel about the club’s performance? NC: I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved here. When I bought the club in 1988 for a pound it was on the brink of collapse. Look at it now.

To boldly go where no one has gone before . That was the motto of Star Trek , the enduring sci-fi franchise in which the crew of a starship travel through the universe encountering new places, new species, and new experiences. However, when a £1million Star Trek exhibition opened in Blackpool two years ago we had a strong sense that this was somewhere we HAD been before. Carol Stenburg The original curator of the exhibit was one Carol Stenburg - a New York born entrepreneur who already had a history of failed exhibitions. She was the director of a Lego exhibition called "Art of the Brick Ltd" which was dissolved after 2 years, and a tour company "Exhibitours Ltd" which went into liquidation owing £17,811. That may not sound a lot of money, unless of course it is owed to you. Cleveleys News reported this detail on 12th July 2016 before the doors even opened: Curator of new Blackpool #StarTrek exhibition Carol Stenberg previously ran a Lego exhibit (diss

Ooooh hello again loves! It's me, Dee Dee, Cleveleys' favourite pensioner back with another blog all about life in Cleveleys from the relatable persepective of an interfering old harridan. Well! This week I was shocked and dismayed to read that ALDI has been threatened with legal action by a British farmer who says the budget supermarket ripped off his trademark chipolatas. I can't believe that some jobsworth yokel who thinks he invented sausages could have the audacity to accuse such a wonderful British institution like ALDI of something like this! Personally I love ALDI, and LIDL and do all of my shopping there. As I have my grown-up daughter and her husband living in our attic I have quite a few mouths to feed so the savings I make there are fantastic. I'm particularly fond of their knock-off products, their version of the Bounty bar is one of my personal favourites. I always keep a multipack next to the loo, as I tend to get a bit peckish when I'm "e

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So says an old proverb. Well, local amateur publication The Gazette have certainly been fooled at least twice by charlatans that we at Cleveleys News immediately recognised and exposed. So shame on them. There was Barry Carr from Rossall Gate, Fleetwood, a member of the BNP dubbed “neighbour from hell” after he repeatedly harangued, harassed and fat-shamed the lady next-door. It made national news when Carr was given a ten week jail term suspended for a year and ordered to pay his victims £200 each in compensation. Gazette were also all over the story, but what they didn’t mention in their coverage was that they had been publishing Carr’s intolerant rants on their letters page for years. Former BNP candidate and @The_Gazette letters page mainstay Barry Carr has appeal bid rejected and his sentence increased. More pages for them to fill... pic.twitter.com/3aPtV9Ge6y — Cleveleys News (@cleveleysnews) February 6, 2018

Let’s face facts - the high street isn’t what it used to be. What was once a wide array of independent shops selling things that you couldn’t buy anywhere else is now a wasteland of bargain stores selling cheap tat that nobody really needs or wants. Blackpool now has so many empty and boarded up shop units it looks like a post-nuclear-apocalyptic landscape (and thanks to the increase in spice users it even has zombies wandering around to complete the look). Decades ago, small businesses like butchers, bakers and candlestick makers were threatened by the arrival of the first supermarkets. A few survived (candlestick makers seem to have fared the worst) and today those that remain serve a dwindling customer base of old people who didn't really want decimalisation, never mind supermarkets. Once that audience has gone, who knows what will happen to those last bastions of local fayre. But even younger generations have witnessed the collapse - record shops, electronics stores, comput

29th March 2018 Gullible I am both outraged and saddened to read so many negative articles about the seagulls in Cleveleys. So a few seagulls have dive-bombed the odd pensioner, stolen their chip barm, or pecked out their eye? Big deal. They are only obeying their instinct. As well as attracting seagulls, Cleveleys also attracts the elderly in large numbers, and they can be just as troublesome. A seagull has never stopped suddenly in the street whilst walking in front of me, scraped my ankle by driving its mobility scooter too close to me, or driven in front of me at 3mph looking for a disabled parking space when I’m already late for the school run. The council have made it illegal to feed seagulls in Cleveleys, yet they continue to fund meals on wheels and feed the pensioners! Mrs C. Taffy Cleveleys Doddy For more than two weeks now all I seem to hear about is the death of Doddy. It’s in every newspaper and on every radio station, Doddy this, Doddy that. Am I goin

Ooh, hello loves! It's me, Dee Dee, here with my first blog about life as a trendy old woman in Cleveleys. You know, I really can't believe how lucky I am to live in Cleveleys, sometimes I have to ask complete strangers to pinch me just so I know I'm not dreaming! Only the other day I was in Home Bargains looking at the synthetic loofahs when I asked a nice young man (about 55 I'd say) to give me a pinch. Ooh, the look he gave me! Anyway this week I was just at home, eating the LIDL version of a Bounty bar whilst on the toilet, when I heard a voice outside. I quickly finished the chocolate bar (which was really yummy - you can't tell they aren't real Bounty bars) and wiped up so I could take a look out of the window.  What I saw out the window horrified me. There were three young people walking on the prom, and they looked like they were up to no good. What sort of upbringing must they have had, that's what I'd like to know. Because I don't kn

Week ending 2nd March 2018 High School Misery The state of Blackpool’s high schools really is shocking. Only one high school in the whole town is rated “Good” by Ofsted! I attended Montgomery back in the day, and it is sad to see how much it has fallen into decline. When I was there we had regular hoax bomb alerts, and a sexual health clinic on site handing out rubber johnnies and doing chlamydia tests. Now I hear they have axed the clinic and introduced discipline – no wonder the kids are miserable and not learning anything! Thanks to my experience there I am now a fully qualified bomb disposal expert and have only had chlamydia once. Bryce Chaverton Cleveleys KFSence It is unbelievable that someone would call 999 to report that KFC had run out of chicken. Don’t these idiots know that by wasting their time they are preventing them from helping real people in need? I’d laugh if one of these morons had a genuine emergency such as discovering McDonalds had run

WEEK ENDING 9th FEB 2018 Riverdance 10th anniversary So it was 10 years since roll-on-roll-off ferry MS Riverdance was shipwrecked at Cleveleys? Big deal. It was 56 years ago that we all climbed about the SS Happy Wanderer with none other than the Carry On crew! If only the Riverdance had been under the command of Captain Crowther (hilariously portrayed by the late Sid James) I am confident that it would not have got into the silly trouble that it did. And if they had, at least they would have had Kenneth Connor’s hilarious ship’s doctor on board to help out with any casualties. Although I imagine that these days with all the ridiculous ‘political correctness’ a doctor who pushed his face into an unconscious woman’s bosom would be stuck off from general practice. Well you PC brigade have got the Riverdance disaster on your consciences. Barry Bispham Switch Me Off Another series of ‘ Take Me Out ’ has begun on ITV with the “hilarious” Paddy McGuinness overseeing a team o

Nothing particularly exciting has really happened in the Cleveleys area recently. I did hear something about some famous Blackpool footballer or other, but as I have only ever played FIFA on consoles and have no interest in real sport it didn’t really seem that significant. This weekend however promises to be all kinds of geek heaven when retro-gaming event PLAY returns to Blackpool. For those of you who aren’t cool like me and don’t even understand what ‘retro-gaming’ is, let me put it into non-nerdy terms that even neuro-typicals can understand - you know how Doctor Who can go back in time by travelling in his TARDIS through the time vortex? It’s a bit like that. A retro-gaming event is one that hosts loads of classic video games and you can imagine you are back in the 1980s, which was an amazing time for emerging gaming technology, even though they didn’t have the internet which must have been rubbish. So join me as I cover all the coolest bits of this amazing dork-fest….

Week ending 26th January 2018 Unsound wall Sirs, I read with some concern that fracking firm Cuadrilla are using a 'sound wall' to reduce noise pollution. Surely using an outdated music production formula invented by convicted murderer Phil Spector is not going to be effective? It is pure madness. Wing Commander Sir Norman Filtrum (retired) Cleveleys Unbreakable logic I recently re-watched the classic 2000 sci-fi film 'Unbreakable' in which Samuel L Jackon's character deliberately causes transport disasters for his own evil gain. It got me thinking - could Wyre Council have deliberately caused the Riverdance to run aground in 2008 in order to boost Cleveleys tourism? Apparently it brought more tourists to the area than Blackpool Illuminations, and many people are gearing up to 'celebrate' the tenth anniversary of this disaster. It smells very fishy to me. I think we should be told. Derek Pretzel Stanah Jimmy Armfield Like many people I

Week ending 19th January 2018 What a drive-thru carry on I for one do not understand all the fuss being made by residents about the new McDonalds. I think a lesson or two could be learned from the Carry On team, who made us all laugh for two decades with 30 films of good old-fashioned postcard humour (I don't recognise 1992's 'Carry On Columbus' as canonical). You didn't see Sid James or Bernard Bresslaw complaining about the smell of burgers or increased traffic around Amounderness Way. Why? I'll tell you why. Because they were too busy watching Barbara Windsor's bra fall off. In this age of so-called political correctness I imagine that it would be considered 'wrong' for a woman's bra to fall off, but I can guarantee that if it were to happen at a council planning meeting it would stop people moaning about McDonalds, momentarily at least. Barbara recently came to Blackpool to switch on the lights and spoke about how much she loved the

Your brilliant news service I just wanted to write and say what a brilliant news service Cleveleys News is. There is far too much sex and violence in the media these days, but Cleveleys News is much more fun and interesting than either of these. Arthur Biscuit, Little Thornton Library closures I am absolutely appalled by the recent library closures. Its all very well saying people don't read books anymore because of the internet, but don't they realise some people do not have access to the internet? I for one have never used the internet, ever. James Sabot, via email What a carry on Why oh why has this country become obsessed with political correctness? Over the festive break I watched all of the classic Carry On films back to back. It took me right back to happier days when we were allowed to be entertained by Dame Barbara Windsor’s bra falling off without someone getting upset about it. These were happier times for men and women, you never heard Dame