Latest news with #Bridport
Times
09-07-2025
- Automotive
- Times
Can I change my car's wheel if I've lost the locking wheel nut key?
Q. Can I change my car's wheel if I've lost my locking wheel nut key? If not, what should I do if I get stranded at the roadside?S L-B, Bridport A. Locking wheel nuts aren't usually part of the manufacturer's original equipment. As a rule in the UK, they are fitted during the vehicle's pre-delivery preparation as a measure to combat alloy wheel and tyre theft, a problem that used to be widespread in Britain. A car left on bricks with its wheels missing was once a relatively common sight, but this practice has been all but stamped out since the introduction of wheel security devices. In fact, they are so effective that when the supplied removal device, or 'key', is misplaced, it can become a real challenge to get the wheels off. • Car Clinic: Help! The battery in my electric car is flat and I'm locked out All AA patrols are equipped with and trained to use specialist locking-wheel-nut removal tools. These kits contain a number of different fittings to get around the security devices, but it's a skilled job that takes time to master and execute at the roadside. It also usually results in irreparable damage to the locking nuts or devices. This is why we urge all drivers to check before a journey they have their locking wheel nut keys stored safely in their cars. • Car Clinic: Does a car's colour affect its resale value? There's another issue. While one of our patrols will endeavour to remove the locking device, carrying out that operation on the hard shoulder of a motorway or a busy A-road isn't usually possible, so the first course of action would be a recovery to a safe location, adding delay to the whole process. Car Clinic: How can I tell how old my tyres are? My advice, if you know you've lost your wheel nut key, is to visit a reputable garage or tyre retailer to have the locking devices professionally removed and replaced with new ones, complete with the removal tool or key. New security kits usually come with two keys, so you can keep one in the car and the spare at Carter, technical expert, the AA Post your motoring questions below or send to carclinic@
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England
Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they're oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the 'urban jackboot' as the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions. Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate 'was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn', but no one knows who the client is. So far I've received no response to the questions I sent to Belport. The people of Littlebredy, a village of 32 homes, wholly owned by the estate, say they have been ordered to leave from January. At the beginning of this month, access to parts of the 800-hectare (2,000-acre) grounds, widely enjoyed by local people, was terminated, with red signs to this effect and padlocks on all the entrances. No one knows who is doing this to them. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming. One person has been evicted already, to make way for an estate office. When she complained about her treatment on social media, the first reply stated, without a shred of evidence: 'You're being evicted so that young fighting age male refugees, who are escaping war in France, can have somewhere safe to live, who, as far as our government is concerned, have priority over you … VOTE REFORM!' That's how divide and rule works: never mind the anonymous plutocrat evicting her, the true culprits, somehow, are asylum seekers. We are lectured by rightwing parties and the rightwing media about the need for 'integration'. But that word is used only as a weapon against immigrants. It is not they who rip communities apart, tear people from their homes and shut us out of the land, causing social disintegration. It is the power of money. But look, a spider! The cosmopolitan city, swarming with immigrants and trans people, is coming to get you! It will terminate the traditions country people love and impose its own culture instead. It is drummed into our heads that what rural people want is different to what the oppressive urbanites desire. But it's not true. Embarrassingly for the self-professed guardians of the countryside, some of the evidence comes from their own surveys. Future Countryside – which tells us it is 'powered by the Countryside Alliance Foundation', the charitable arm of the Countryside Alliance – commissioned polling in 2023. Its question about a wider right to roam in the countryside was phrased in a way that made it sound threatening: 'To what extent do you agree that the public should have the 'right to roam' meaning that anyone can wander in the open countryside regardless of whether the land is privately or publicly owned?' Even so, there was almost no difference between the responses of urban and rural people: 55% of urban people and 54% of rural people agreed it was a good idea. Even more strikingly, when asked which political party 'would do the most to prioritise/protect/promote the countryside?', only 9% each of urban and rural people named the Conservatives, while 38% in both categories said the Green party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these answers failed to find their way into Future Countryside's public presentation of the results. Instead, the only mention of a right to roam was a comment from an anonymous rural respondent: 'They weren't brought up in the countryside. They think they can wander across all the fields with the right to roam.' Links to both the raw polling data and the public presentation on the organisation's website currently show a '404 error' when you try to open them. Strangely, writing a year after these results were published, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, claimed that a wider right to roam is 'completely contradictory to what the public actually wants'. With admirable chutzpah, he accused those calling for it of waging a 'culture war in the countryside'. When YouGov framed the question more objectively, for a poll commissioned by the Right to Roam campaign, it found that 68% of urban people and 68% of rural people supported it. It also discovered, in stark contrast to the claims of certain rural 'guardians' who call it 'the social glue that keeps rural communities together', that opposition to hunting with dogs is strong everywhere: 78% of urban people and 74% of rural people are against it. As the access campaigner Jon Moses points out in an article for the Lead, 'the issues over which we're told we're most divided are often the issues on which we actually most agree'. That view is supported by some fascinating research published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. It found that while in several other western countries there is a stark political divide between urban and rural people, this does not apply in Britain. 'We do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied or 'left behind' compared to their urban counterparts.' On cultural issues, it found, 'ruralites are often less – not more – authoritarian than urbanites … and are less likely to support an undemocratic leader'. We are fundamentally the same people, despite the best efforts of the culture warriors to divide us. But we must be persuaded that other people don't want what we want: that we are the outsiders, the interlopers, the weird minority, pushing against the social current. In reality, the weird minority are the 1% who own half of all the land in England, and the subset of that group who hide their ownership behind front companies and opaque trusts. If the government's proposed changes to the Land Registry go ahead, it may become easier to discover the true owners of places such as Bridehead, though I suspect we will still struggle. On 5 July, the Right to Roam campaign will organise a peaceful trespass at Bridehead, to draw attention to the almost feudal powers blighting rural life. The real conflict is not town v country, but money and power v people. That holds, regardless of where you live. Never let powerful people tell you who you are. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England
Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they're oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the 'urban jackboot' as the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions. Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate 'was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn', but no one knows who the client is. So far I've received no response to the questions I sent to Belport. The people of Littlebredy, a village of 32 homes, wholly owned by the estate, say they have been ordered to leave from January. At the beginning of this month, access to parts of the 800-hectare (2,000-acre) grounds, widely enjoyed by local people, was terminated, with red signs to this effect and padlocks on all the entrances. No one knows who is doing this to them. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming. One person has been evicted already, to make way for an estate office. When she complained about her treatment on social media, the first reply stated, without a shred of evidence: 'You're being evicted so that young fighting age male refugees, who are escaping war in France, can have somewhere safe to live, who, as far as our government is concerned, have priority over you … VOTE REFORM!' That's how divide and rule works: never mind the anonymous plutocrat evicting her, the true culprits, somehow, are asylum seekers. We are lectured by rightwing parties and the rightwing media about the need for 'integration'. But that word is used only as a weapon against immigrants. It is not they who rip communities apart, tear people from their homes and shut us out of the land, causing social disintegration. It is the power of money. But look, a spider! The cosmopolitan city, swarming with immigrants and trans people, is coming to get you! It will terminate the traditions country people love and impose its own culture instead. It is drummed into our heads that what rural people want is different to what the oppressive urbanites desire. But it's not true. Embarrassingly for the self-professed guardians of the countryside, some of the evidence comes from their own surveys. Future Countryside – which tells us it is 'powered by the Countryside Alliance Foundation', the charitable arm of the Countryside Alliance – commissioned polling in 2023. Its question about a wider right to roam in the countryside was phrased in a way that made it sound threatening: 'To what extent do you agree that the public should have the 'right to roam' meaning that anyone can wander in the open countryside regardless of whether the land is privately or publicly owned?' Even so, there was almost no difference between the responses of urban and rural people: 55% of urban people and 54% of rural people agreed it was a good idea. Even more strikingly, when asked which political party 'would do the most to prioritise/protect/promote the countryside?', only 9% each of urban and rural people named the Conservatives, while 38% in both categories said the Green party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these answers failed to find their way into Future Countryside's public presentation of the results. Instead, the only mention of a right to roam was a comment from an anonymous rural respondent: 'They weren't brought up in the countryside. They think they can wander across all the fields with the right to roam.' Links to both the raw polling data and the public presentation on the organisation's website currently show a '404 error' when you try to open them. Strangely, writing a year after these results were published, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, claimed that a wider right to roam is 'completely contradictory to what the public actually wants'. With admirable chutzpah, he accused those calling for it of waging a 'culture war in the countryside'. When YouGov framed the question more objectively, for a poll commissioned by the Right to Roam campaign, it found that 68% of urban people and 68% of rural people supported it. It also discovered, in stark contrast to the claims of certain rural 'guardians' who call it 'the social glue that keeps rural communities together', that opposition to hunting with dogs is strong everywhere: 78% of urban people and 74% of rural people are against it. As the access campaigner Jon Moses points out in an article for the Lead, 'the issues over which we're told we're most divided are often the issues on which we actually most agree'. That view is supported by some fascinating research published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. It found that while in several other western countries there is a stark political divide between urban and rural people, this does not apply in Britain. 'We do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied or 'left behind' compared to their urban counterparts.' On cultural issues, it found, 'ruralites are often less – not more – authoritarian than urbanites … and are less likely to support an undemocratic leader'. We are fundamentally the same people, despite the best efforts of the culture warriors to divide us. But we must be persuaded that other people don't want what we want: that we are the outsiders, the interlopers, the weird minority, pushing against the social current. In reality, the weird minority are the 1% who own half of all the land in England, and the subset of that group who hide their ownership behind front companies and opaque trusts. If the government's proposed changes to the Land Registry go ahead, it may become easier to discover the true owners of places such as Bridehead, though I suspect we will still struggle. On 5 July, the Right to Roam campaign will organise a peaceful trespass at Bridehead, to draw attention to the almost feudal powers blighting rural life. The real conflict is not town v country, but money and power v people. That holds, regardless of where you live. Never let powerful people tell you who you are. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at
BBC News
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Auctioned elephant statue donated back to Bridport
One of a group of 30 painted elephant statues sold at auction has been donated back to a Dorset moulded fibreglass herd spent two months on display at outdoor locations in west Dorset as part of a family trail, entitled Stampede by the Sea, to raise money for Weldmar elephant called Ropey - named after Bridport's rope-making history - was bought by a local holiday company and donated to the town's council said it would tour Ropey around the area for photo opportunities to raise more money for the hospice. In a statement, the town council said "huge thanks" to West Dorset Holiday Cottage for donating Ropey after paying £3,600 for her at the auction."We hope that her tour will raise more money for Weldmar Hospicecare and their vital services which hugely benefit our town," it asked for suggestions for any potential host charity placed more than 50 elephants, painted by different artists, at locations in Bridport, Lyme Regis and West Bay in March. They were auctioned off last week, raising more than £180, anonymous buyer paid the top price of £25,000 for an elephant called Sanctuary, painted with images of wildlife and statue, featuring images of Dorset figures ranging from author Thomas Hardy to BBC Radio Solent presenter Steve Harris, fetched £20, firm Wild In Art has created statues for trails around the country, with most of the figures being sold for good causes, raising more than £27m. You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Dorset elephant trail statues sell for more than £170k
A group of 30 painted elephant statues have been sold at auction for more than £170, moulded fibreglass herd spent two months on display at outdoor locations in west Dorset as part of a family were sold by Weldmar Hospicecare, with some of the money going to the statues' manufacturer Wild In anonymous buyer paid the top price of £25,000 for an elephant called Sanctuary, painted with images of wildlife and plants. Weldmar's chief operating officer Matt Smith said: "This project has been such an ambitious project for the team and it's just been so nice to end on such a high."We've got to shift them all today to their new homes and then we'll start thinking about what the next thing is."The charity placed more than 50 elephants, painted by different artists, at locations in Bridport, Lyme Regis and West Bay in which was stationed outside Weldmar's charity shop in Bridport, was painted by Nicola Dennis who said it was inspired by her love of statue, featuring images of Dorset figures ranging from author Thomas Hardy to BBC Radio Solent presenter Steve Harris, fetched £20, firm Wild In Art has created statues for trails around the country, with most of the figures being sold for good Director Charlie Langhorne said: "They end up in gardens, private houses and corporate venues. Some have even been donated back to the hospices."We think we've raised about 27 and a half million pounds so far." You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
