Stroud Time: The town's very own time zone
I mean that in a positive way – it is what makes us different and what attracts so many people to our town and the surrounding area.
Our somewhat quirky history helps shape the town and communities we have today – and this week I got to be part of celebrating a more unusual part of our town history.
Before the railways and government legislation to standardise time in England, Stroud had its own time – Stroud Time.
Noon, Stroud Time, was the point at which the sun was highest in the sky in Stroud.
As we're around 90 miles west of London, this was nine minutes later than when the sun was highest in Greenwich.
For years this didn't matter, until the arrival of the railway in the mid-1800s – when "Railway Time" was based on London Time (GMT as we know it today).
Jeweller and clock maker Robert Bragg made a clock that was sited at his shop, a location that's now between Oxfam and Subway on King Street.
In public view, Bragg's clock helped our communities ensure they didn't miss the arrival or departure of trains in our town by showing Railway Time.
The clock is now proudly displayed in the Museum in the Park.
It will likely not come as a surprise that Stroud was one of the last places in England to change to London Time from its own time, in the 1880s.
To help celebrate this special part of history, Dransfield Properties have installed an antique clock face in their Five Valleys Centre that's permanently set to 12:09 – that's noon to us who call Stroud our home.
The installation is called Stroud Time.
A significant part of being mayor is being an ambassador for the town and its communities.
Not only was it an honour to be part of the official unveiling, I was delighted to be able to share the story both on BBC local radio and on BBC Points West.
It all helps to put Stroud on the map, for positive reasons.
Changing topic … who do you speak to when you're not happy about something a council needs to look into?
It's not easy to know – I struggle sometimes too.
When at public engagements, I often open with "and I'm not responsible for potholes!" – it has to be the most common complaint I receive.
Not only can it be challenging to work out where each of our tiers of council start and end, it will likely change with devolution.
Already we have work we undertake as a town council that should sit at district level, such as hiring a new team member to keep our town looking cleaner – Mark joined our team this week.
To help navigate who is responsible for what, and some of the likely changes heading our way, it's a major theme within our upcoming newsletter (being printed as I type), so you can see more clearly where current responsibilities sit and where we could be headed.
These changes will impact us all, so it's really important we have the opportunity to understand that impact.
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Boston Globe
6 days ago
- Boston Globe
The desperate struggle to squeeze aid into a starving Gaza
Advertisement Now Israel is pausing the fighting in some parts of Gaza each day to help aid convoys move, approving some imported food for sale in Gaza and allowing aid to be airdropped. But all of it is far too little, far too late, aid officials say. Nothing less than a ceasefire will allow the necessary avalanche of aid to flow safely into Gaza, they say. Israeli leaders' decision to take control of Gaza City throws the aid system into further doubt. To have a real impact, aid agencies say Israel needs to allow in the hundreds of thousands of pallets of aid languishing outside Gaza -- enough to cover around 100 soccer fields, they say -- and help ensure that the aid can be distributed safely. Letting in small numbers of trucks and airdropping supplies is little more than a public relations stunt, aid officials contend. Advertisement 'It's a joke, it's all just theatrics,' Bushra Khalidi, an aid official working on Oxfam's response in Gaza, said last week. 'We're talking about 2 million people. It's not 100 trucks or a pausing or a few hours of calm that is going to meet the needs of a population that has been starved for months,' Khalidi said. 'Starvation has a long-term impact, and it affects growth of children, and it's not something that you can reverse by throwing energy bars from the sky.' Israel says that the level of hunger has been exaggerated and that it is doing its best to lessen it. Israel's military spokesperson has said there is no starvation in Gaza. The Israeli agency coordinating aid for Gaza did not respond to a request for comment. Israel has also blamed the United Nations for not bringing in more food, while the organization says that Israel frequently denies or delays its requests to bring in convoys, among other challenges. Many aid workers say airdrops endanger desperate people while feeding only a few, and only those physically able to retrieve it. During previous airdrops, people have been injured by falling aid; others have drowned or crossed into combat zones to retrieve packages that fell there, officials say. When he recently saw a plane drop aid by parachute, Mohammed Abu Taha, 43, who is sheltering in southern Gaza, ran toward it. By the time he arrived, other Palestinians were fighting over the remaining bags of food. 'People are too desperate,' he said. 'I ran a lot and got nothing at all.' Advertisement Each airdrop delivers at most two truckloads of aid, and usually less, aid officials said. 'Airdrops are the most ineffective, expensive way of delivering aid possible,' said Bob Kitchen, who oversees emergency response at the International Rescue Committee, a group working in Gaza. With nearly 1 in 3 people going without food for days at a time, according to the United Nations, clinics treating malnutrition are at or over capacity. Children are becoming too weak to scavenge through trash for food or even to cry, aid workers say. An international group of experts said in late July that famine thresholds had been reached across much of Gaza. Health officials there say scores of people have died from malnutrition, including dozens of children, though aid workers say that is probably an undercount. Aid workers say that number could potentially climb to the tens or hundreds of thousands without a rapid surge in aid. Weakened by months of extreme deprivation, people have few defenses left to stop illnesses as ordinary as diarrhea from killing them. And those diseases are rampant. The number of people with acute watery diarrhea increased by 150% from March to June, and those with bloody diarrhea by 302%, health data from aid agencies shows. Those figures, which include only people who can reach medical centers, are most likely an undercount, according to Oxfam. Staving off famine therefore depends not only on food, but also on fuel to run hospitals, cooking gas to make meals and clean water and sanitation to keep waterborne diseases in check -- all of which are absent or nearly absent from Gaza, aid workers say. Aid agencies have received 200 to 300 trucks in Gaza each day for the past several days, the Israeli agency coordinating aid said. They mainly carried flour along with prepared meals, infant formula, high-energy biscuits, diapers, vaccines and fuel, the United Nations said. Before the war, Gaza received 500 to 600 trucks a day of aid and goods for sale. Advertisement The flour provides calories, but will not save those who are severely malnourished after nearly two years of deprivation, aid workers say. Malnourished people need specialized feeding and care. Yet hospitals have few supplies left. David M. Satterfield, who served as special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues in the Biden administration, said the only practical solution was to 'flood the zone' with aid. 'It's not rocket science,' he said. It is too late to reverse developmental and cognitive harm to young children who have been malnourished for months, experts say. 'The damage is already done, and that's going to be a lifelong impact for a lot of people,' said Beckie Ryan, the Gaza response director for CARE. 'What we can do is mitigate that going forward and stop it getting worse. But it does require a huge amount of supplies and aid to be able to come in as soon as possible.' The death toll from the war has passed 60,000, according to Gaza's health ministry. Israel cut off aid to Gaza in retaliation for the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage. Limited aid deliveries later resumed under a U.N.-run system, until March, when Israel imposed another total blockade. In May, Israel largely replaced the U.N. aid system by backing a new operation mainly run by American contractors. Israeli officials said that was the only way to ensure the food would not fall into Hamas' hands. Advertisement At least 859 Palestinians seeking food from the private sites have been killed since May 27, in most cases by Israeli soldiers, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. Israeli officials have said they fired shots in the air when crowds came too close or endangered their forces. The violence has renewed calls to allow the United Nations to resume managing aid. The New York Times reported that the Israeli military had never found proof that Hamas systematically stole aid from the United Nations -- a charge Israel frequently repeated. 'We are struggling to understand why you need to come out with parallel shadow systems, when we had a fully functional aid distribution system in Gaza managed by the U.N. and international agencies,' said Jamil Sawalmeh, who oversees ActionAid's Gaza response. Even with Israeli pauses in fighting, it is dangerous for aid trucks to move around Gaza. While Israel is approving more movement by aid groups, which have to be coordinated in advance, teams still faced delays and other obstacles, the United Nations said. The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said on Wednesday that the number of the U.S.-backed sites could soon quadruple. An Israeli security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military rules, said Israel was increasing the number of trucks entering Gaza, including by withdrawing some forces and working to open a third crossing into the enclave. Even when trucks can move, little makes it to the aid warehouses where humanitarian agencies collect supplies before distributing them. Advertisement Most of it is taken by the thousands of Palestinians, including some armed gangs, who regularly wait near the trucks' route to grab whatever they can, aid workers say. But doing so can be deadly, with 514 killed since May 27, mostly by Israel's military, according to U.N. figures. On Wednesday, Ehab Fasfous, 52, a resident of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, inched toward the trucks' route, aware, he said, that Israeli soldiers could open fire if he ventured too close. He shared a series of videos of the mayhem he saw next: hundreds, perhaps thousands of people closing in on the trucks from every direction. At one point in the videos, which he said he took, a man menaces another person with a knife near a bag of flour. Fasfous went home empty-handed. 'They've deprived us of so much that now we're behaving like animals,' he said. Only those who can brave such dangers get aid, aid officials say. The people most in need -- like pregnant women, older adults or the sick -- receive only what aid groups bring them, unless they can pay the astronomical prices of what little food is available in markets, aid workers say. 'We have to find a way for assistance to reach the weakest,' said Antoine Renard, the World Food Program's director for the Palestinian territories, who visited Gaza this week. The price of flour has dropped precipitously in recent days, according to Gaza government statistics, but it remains unaffordable for all but the few who still have resources. Yaser Shaban, 58, spends his salary as a Palestinian civil servant and his savings on flour, canned food and herbs at the market. If he goes to a privately run center or tries to take aid from a truck, 'I have no guarantees I'll bring something back,' he said. 'And if I get killed, what chances does my family have then?' he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
CBS News
05-08-2025
- CBS News
Clark Street subway station reopens after hotel awning collapse in Brooklyn Heights
The Clark Street subway station reopened Tuesday morning in Brooklyn after an awning collapsed over the weekend and blocked off the entrance. The Brooklyn Heights station was closed to commuters Monday but has since reopened. Surveillance video captured the moment the awning of the historic St. George hotel collapsed Sunday morning by the corner of Clark and Henry streets. Fortunately, no one was underneath the awning at the time, and no one was injured. The collapse blocked off an entrance to the 2 and 3 train station. The MTA said trains were still running through the station, but not making any stops there. This also impacted several businesses along the block that rely on the commuter traffic. "The first thing is how do we get service back to this station. And there are two entrances that need to be addressed. Which one can we get done the fastest to get customers safely into the station?" MTA President of NYC Transit Demetrius Crichlow said Monday after touring the damage. The Department of Buildings said the 15-foot by 20-foot awning had signs of poor maintenance, and that a similar awning on the other side of the hotel is now being inspected. The DOB issued two violations to St. George's Hotel Associates for not properly maintaining the building on Henry Street. CBS News New York reached out to the owners and has not heard back. The building is occupied in part by Education Housing Services, which said in a statement while they are not directly responsible for the maintenance of the building, they are "in active communication with the building's ownership and management to ensure any necessary repairs are addressed promptly." The DOB said Monday the owners were working to repair the awnings and the station would reopen pending a final inspection.
CBS News
04-08-2025
- CBS News
Clark Street subway station in Brooklyn closed indefinitely after awning collapse
Brooklyn's Clark Street subway station has been shut down indefinitely following the collapse a hotel awning above its entrance. Surveillance video captured the moment Sunday morning when the awning came crashing down in front of the 2 and 3 Clark Street station. Thankfully, nobody was nearby when it happened, and there were no injuries. A spokesperson from the Department of Buildings said the 15-foot by 20-foot awning showed signs of poor maintenance, but the investigation into the collapse is continuing. The station's entrances are located within the same building where the awning collapsed. A similar awning is on the other side of the hotel, and investigators are inspecting it, saying it shows similar signs of corrosion as the awning that collapsed. That means there's no way right now to get in or out of the station, hence its closure. The station's closure is frustrating businesses and residents in Brooklyn Heights, and adding inconvenience to the daily commute. MTA officials spoke about those concerns Monday morning after announcing they are not sure when the station would be able to be reopened. "We're as frustrated as they are. We have a service that we are willing and ready to provide, and so not having the ability to provide customers the transportation that they need and deserve is just unacceptable. We've elevated it to the top," the MTA President of NYC Transit Demetrius Crichlow added Monday after checking out the damage. "So the first thing is how do we get service back to this station. And there are two entrances that need to be addressed - which one can we get done the fastest to get customers safely into the station." Trains are still running though the Clark Street station, just not stopping there for now. City officials say the building is the responsibility of Educational Housing Services, and adds EHS has been responsible for the lobby entrance since 1915. Councilman Lincoln Restler said the building is the responsibility of Educational Housing Services, or EHS, which provides dormitory housing. Just this past Friday, Restler says he met with the NYC Transit president about a game plan to address issues with EHS. "We get complaints from our constituents, our neighbors, every week about the stench of sewage, about the grime and the filth," Restler said. CBS News New York reached out to EHS for comment but did not hear back Sunday evening. The DOB website shows two open violations from 2021 related to the building's façade, and a third from 2022 in violation of a local law related to façade safety. The DOB has issued a partial vacate order, which means small businesses like a shoe repair shop, bodega and florist, cannot operate for the time being.
