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Welcome to Belper

With its busy shopping streets packed with unique independent businesses, its history and heritage, its parks, reserves and beautiful spaces, Belper in Derbyshire is a great place to visit.

Find out more about this thriving, historic market town here: belper.madhm.uk.

Welcome to Belper

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Dangerous Lengths

As we all know, there are numerous phrases, idioms and clichés which litter our conversations, but which usually slip by without a second thought. In fact, there were two just there. But are we right to take these things for granted? This is the question which is currently occupying a special cross-party panel set up by the Government. Chairman Sir John Gravytrain outlined the main concerns.

"Take the expression 'dangerous lengths' for example," he told us. "As in 'so-and-so went to dangerous lengths in order to do this or that'. Well, exactly what lengths are we talking about? The inexactitude of such an expression could lead to confusion, injury and possibly even loss of life. So one of the first things we did was to define a dangerous length as being three foot six."

Flushed with this success, the panel has gone on to set the value of 'an arm and a leg' as being two hundred and sixty pounds, found out that actions which 'speak louder than words' usually do so by a margin of around forty decibels and when it comes to 'barking up the wrong tree' the tree in question is an elm in a small field near Stevenage.

"Currently we are giving careful consideration to the phrase 'a bird in the hand is worth two in bush'," Sir John informed us. "We're trying to work out exactly what exchange rate mechanism is at play here."

We suggested that it might have something to do with the price of fish, but Sir John dismissed this suggestion as being the height of stupidity - which apparently is seven foot and three quarters.

Universal Serial Sheep

TECHNOLOGY NEWS: Good news for farmers arrives next month when Phillips launches a new range of sheep fitted with USB ports. For many years now, agricultural workers have been bemoaning the lack of standardisation when it comes to livestock connections, with a broad variety of proprietary technology on the market to complicate the industry. We heard from one relieved expert, who warmly welcomed this new breakthrough.

"Well it's about bloody time," said farmer and sheep enthusiast Fergus Pong. "I have a right old ding-dong rummaging through drawers looking for the right adaptor. At last I'll be able to download all my wool in one go. Now if someone could just sort out a standard voltage for cows, we'll be laughing."

Scooter Park

Users of mobility scooters in Hartlepool have finally got the brand new scooter park that they have been demanding for years. And local resident Mrs Edna Womble, 72, is delighted.

"I'm delighted," she told us. "At last I've got somewhere I can try out all my latest moves. "It's no fun trying to practise a San Francisco Flip or Ollie Airwalk in the street. Last week I tried to do an Incredible Frontside-Backside in the back alley, but the front wheel got tangled up in my shopping, the scooter span out of control and I ended up wedged headfirst in next door's wheelie bin."

The new park replaces an older amenity which was closed down some years ago after it was used by a gang dealing in illegal cod liver oil capsules and butter toffees. And Mrs Womble - who is genuinely familiar with all the tricks she mentioned in the last paragraph, and didn't just copy a load of skateboarding terms from Wikipedia - is pleased that the council have finally paid some attention to the needs of older people.

"Well, the council have finally paid some attention to the needs of older people," she told us. "And I'm pleased about that. For too long senior citizens have been branded anti-social delinquents, just because we want to bust a few moves outside the shopping centre. At least now I can do the Switchfoot Pogo as much as I like without being hassled by the Babylon."