Cleveleys News

Blackpool's amateur publication The​ Evening Gazette caught our attention today with a lengthy and detailed article about a thuggish attack in Blackpool. But this wasn't just your typical Blackpool brawl - incredibly the victim was a peer of the realm! From The Gazette 'Lord' Perry Harber, who "has a vast portfolio of nightclubs and bars and regularly holidays in Monaco" according to the Gazette article, claims he was hit over the head from behind with a full bottle of vodka by a gang in an alleyway behind Dickson Road, Blackpool on January 1st this year. The Gazette go on to list just some of Lord Perry Harber's amazing credentials and achievements. As Lord of the Manor of Glascombe, Harber "presides over almost 15,000 acres of land". He "has invested in a number of businesses in Lytham" and is a "businessman and charity fundraiser". Not to mention his incredible ability to identify the precise contents and volu...

Cleveleys MP in bizarre love-triangle with conjoined twins watched his two-headed lover eat dogfood whilst listening to Status Quo’s Greatest Hits on MiniDisc. It’s exactly the sort of rubbish you expect to read in the news these days, as ‘fake news’ is on the rise. At least that’s what some people want you to believe – but in an age of fake news, should you believe them? And if they aren’t to be believed, then is there really all the fake news they claim there is?  It’s a minefield. Ever since President Donald Trump began banding around the term ‘fake news’, it seems everybody is either using, or misusing it. Of course, Hoax news items deliberately written to mislead should rightly be called ‘fake news’ when they are created for the purpose of financial gain, perhaps through the sales of newspapers; or for some other personal gain such as political advantage. But just because something isn’t true doesn’t make it fake. Most people that like to read or watch the new...

They say that 'all roads lead to Rome', meaning that ultimately any route will get you where you want to go. That might have been true in the days of the Roman Empire, but when Caesar Augustus had the Milliarium Aureum built in 20BCE as a focal point for his empire's road system he didn't have to contend with Blackpool Council digging up massive sections of it right in the middle of school term time. The roads around Blackpool and the Fylde are woefully inadequate at the best of times, but in the past few months we have had Crossley's Bridge closed (for a full 6 months), complete closure of Anchorsholme promenade and the junction at Watson Road, as well as roadworks with temporary traffic lights along Blackpool promenade. Traffic around Blackpool is at breaking point. All of this work happening at once is so ill-thought-out that anyone would think they’d done it on purpose. Perhaps Blackpool Council think six months of absolute hell on the roads will mak...

Dr Seuss famously wrote in his lesser known, yet seminal work ‘ There’s a Weeveleys in my Cleveleys ’: "You’ll feel you’re on high, way up in the sky and you’ll never come down when in Cleveleys town! But you’ll land with a thump and end up in a grump feeling ever so glum if you go to Bispham" These words have become something of a mantra for Cleveleys children who grew up in less complex times, guiding them through life. Sure there’s self-help books for adults such as ‘ Stagnate & stay in Cleveleys ’, or ‘ Men are from Earth, and so are Women ’, but when you hit one of life’s difficult moments you can’t beat the simple wisdom of Seuss – sometimes life is great, but sometimes it isn’t.  Also avoid going to Bispham wherever possible. Sometimes though, feeling a bit ‘glum’ is a whopping great understatement - when life throws you something so gut-wrenchingly awful that you struggle to eat or sleep, you have that hollow void in your stomach day and night, it be...

If you live in the Blackpool area and are looking for somewhere to eat out this weekend, you may have looked in The Evening Gazette's lifestyle section, where this week you can read what I believe to be the worst restaurant review ever for 'Mr Basrai's World Buffet'. I don't mean the review is bad in the sense that it is scathing of the restaurant – just that it reads like it was written by a 9 year old, and not a particularly bright one at that. Read on and see if you agree… RESTAURANT REVIEW: Mr Basrai’s - a place you can taste the difference Taste the difference? Between what? My daughter has reached that age where a meal is now a birthday must, along with the ever increasing list of gifts and of course, a party. Are you sure your daughter didn’t write this article? It reads very much like a child’s homework. So the choice of venue fell to her, and to my surprise it didn’t include pizza! Except it DID include pizza, as you go on to say. Mr Ba...

There was a time when being a nerd was something of a dirty word Reading books and being clever was not a popular endeavour But that opinion was soon offset with the advent of the Internet These days it’s harder for the ridiculer as geeks are considered so much cooler But they need a place they all can meet, somewhere to go for a nerdy treat and so was created a brand new invention: something called a Comic Convention They happen all over, in towns and in cities Some of them good, and some of them…. not so good Then Fylde coast nerds began to drool at news of a comic con here in Blackpool! The hype for this event soon began No one suspected it might be a scam They promised 'conateers' would have a ball and that this event would have it all Meet your favourite sci-fi actor! There’s a technician from the death star’s reactor One of the zombies from Dawn of the Dead The guy who operated Jabba’s head You can cospla...

Set in 1950s Cleveleys, the moving tale of a shoe seller’s daughter and her struggle to overcome prejudice in a male-dominated profession. WARNING: This review may contain loafers. The Shoe Seller’s Daughter is the third in J.R.R. Withers hugely unsuccessful series of footwear novels which began with A Tale of Two Slippers and was followed by To Kill A Moccasin . Fourteen years on from the events of Moccasin we find Iain Smithers’ daughter Clarabelle has come of age and is preparing to take over the family business, but she has a rival in the form of her evil uncle Clark Startrite who believes a woman has no place in the shoe trade and wishes to take over his brother’s business himself. Withers appears to have taken on board criticism of his previous works, that they were “disturbingly shoe-obsessed” (Times) and “entirely lacking in coherent prose” (Independent). Blackpool’s Evening Gazette was slightly kinder with their review when they said his previous work “reads...