Woman police officer done for speeding

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 4:38 PM | add or read comments (0)

83mph in a 40! Through the roadworks! Tut, tut. The boss wouldn't be happy.
It's especially bad news if your boss happens to be the man dubbed by the Daily Mail as the leader of the Traffic Taliban, one Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom.
As things stand, policewoman Jacqueline Edwards' appearance in court today (she got a 50-day ban) is going on tomorrow's front page.
After a quiet-ish week there are some strong stories around today. We've some fantastic news about 300 jobs being created in Bangor.
Read about the rather bizarre request that the boys in blue have made to lock down Rhyl's pubs after the town's footballing finest entertain Irish side Bohemians this Saturday.
Page three is devoted to touching tributes to a brave little girl from Anglesey who has lost her fight with stomach cancer. Thanks to her family for sharing their story with us.

Best picture story of the week? Hats off to our sister paper the North Wales Weekly News for the amazing image of the blazing bus in Conwy yesterday. We've now popped it on our website but they certainly scooped us today!

Things are moving on apace over our plans to create a Welsh language news website. More news follows soon.

Brickbats for Conwy's traffic wardens. Booking people's cars in the nine-tenths empty car park in Deganwy the other night. Shame on you. And what has Conwy council got against Deganwy? The business rates have killed off half the shops, the Chinese restaurant is made to sweat over their expansion plans and the car park fees have gone through the roof.

No fear of Conwy council workers having to pay for parking at Bodlondeb - it's still free on weekdays!

The A(aagh)55

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 7:41 AM | add or read comments (2)

Have you ever felt like gnawing the steering wheel with rage? The A55. The A bloody 55.
It's just a long, thin car park.
After agonisingly long trips on consecutive days to Liverpool and back, I hate it more than easy strip of tar deserves to be hated.
Yesterday's front page piled on the misery - the delays are likely all summer.
I want to find the bloke who said 30-odd years ago, "I reckon we can manage without a hard shoulder on the 55. If there's roadworks we'll just have single lanes. It will be fine."
I want to find him and I want to take him for a little drive.

At least I came back from the Capital of Clutter with something useful - a great insight into the absolute latest developments on the web from Trinity Mirror's finest internet minds who joined us for a strategy day. Some of the stuff coming out of the states is "awesome" as those people who leave comments on YouTube say.

And I love the innuendo-riddled language of the web. This blog has already introduced to the delights of "content squirting". Now I bring you "soft scraping" which is apparently okay, whereas "hard scraping" is definitely a Very Bad Thing.

Grant goes to Golwg

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 4:48 PM | add or read comments (4)

So the Assembly Government funding for Welsh language news media has gone to Golwg. All £600,000 of it.
I need to declare an interest here. We put in a bid for just some of the money to help us develop a Welsh language news website. We came away empty handed which was a pity because, as well as being staunch supporters of yr iaith we have a fantastic reputation for delivering news in print and online.
Golwg cyf, based in Lampeter, does pretty well out of public sector funding. They already get £75,000 a year from the books council to support their weekly magazine's art pages. Other publications they produce have also received public funding.
The question for us now is whether we press on and create a brilliant Welsh language news website and make it so popular that advertisers and sponsors will be clamouring to come on board with us.
A little leg-up would have helped. But I wouldn't mind having a crack at it anyway. What do you think?

The BBC - yesterday's news tomorrow

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 3:44 PM | add or read comments (0)

There is considerable venting of steam from ears across the newspaper industry over reports that the BBC is planning to take £68m of licence fee money to put lots of video on their local news websites.
It’s for “young people” says Auntie Beeb, as though anyone under 21 can only cope with bright, shifting colours.
Silly me, thinking that my licence fee was just a protection racket for TV owners. Now, it seems, I am forced as a telly owner to hand over chunks of money to support a non-commercial organisation seeking to steal my customers.
But the BBC remains what it is, a follower of the news agenda set by other media organisations. No doubt we will be seeing lots of videos based on stories (and videos) which have appeared days before in the Daily Post or on dailypost.co.uk.
So if you want to get the news first, stick with us.

Here’s my first update on life as publishing editor North Wales.
“Congratulations on the new job” said a colleague on day one. “You ought to know that the men’s loos have flooded”.

See, shouldering the burden already.

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• BBC

Trains, strains and automobiles

• Posted by Rob Irvine at 11:01 PM | add or read comments (0)

Commuter chaos is the theme of Tuesday's page one lead.

Two gargantuan sets of roadworks on the A55 were bad enough. Then a fire in a derelict school close to the railway line halted all train services between Chester and both the North Wales coast and Wrexham.

I was caught up in the roadworks on the way back from a morning meeting in Chester. How utterly frustrating to be burning £1.25 a litre diesel when you're not moving. I filled up in Llandudno Junction yesterday. At these prices I half expected a sommelier to be manning the pumps.

We also have the story of a headteacher of a school where a child fell and later died who has had his health and safety conviction quashed. James Porter, the owner of Hillgrove School in Bangor, was found guilty last July following the death of Kian Williams, who died from MRSA after the accident.

We report how local MPs have voted in the embryology debate in the Commons this evening.

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• A55