Monthly Archives: January 2026

Thank you to Martyn Smith,Local Democracy Reporter, Dudley BBC Online News for the Headline

Well some of you may go surprise, surprise with this story. In the end though it was a bit of a damp squib as the complaints fell off the cliff after the Private Parking Company did some extra training on Customer Service skills and also ticked off those operatives who parked illegally while ticketing the Public.

Apparently since the extra training there hasn’t been any complaints, which is good as the Company supplies Parking Attendants to some 60 Councils .

So the poor members of the Public who were subject to a sarcastic jibe or two from a jobs worth can settle back into their normal routine and just hope that the machines are working and that their cars are in working order and don’t need to be rescued from a pay as you stay Car Park. Time is money when it comes to Car Parking.

A penny for his thoughts

Namaste and Thank You for Reading.🙏

Thanks to Harry Cockburn of the Independent Online for the Headline.

So apparently in order to boost her entitlement to Royal lineage , Elizabeth the First, had a portrait of Anne Boleyn( her mother who was executed by her father King Henry V111) painted with a strong resemblance or indeed based on her own appearance.

At the time of her reign, there were many threats to her right to the Monarchy, so it was natural to use any method to publicise that she was indeed the rightful heir to the English Throne.

It seems odd to me that she would want to be associated with a woman who Henry V111, said was such a wicked and wanton woman. In fact it’s amazing that Elizabeth 1 turned out to be such an effective Queen who ruled for 45 years despite being made illegitimate when her parents marriage was annulled. Henry having a change of mind when Elizabeth was ten years old and restored her to the line of succession.

A lot of water was still to pass under the bridge, but I’d like to think that the portrait was also produced as a way for Elizabeth to honour her mother, who having died when she was barely two , she would hardly have known what she looked like.

Let’s face it Elizabeth never married or had children of her own, perhaps her mother’s story made her fiercely independent and skeptical about the fate of Tudor women and maybe the one thing she could cling onto was the love of her mother.

It was probably a man’s world.