Reading Roars!

will be taking a break and will return the week commencing 22 August 2005. The next Weekly Digest will be sent out on 28 August. See ya!

The Royal Berkshire and Battle Hospitals NHS Trust launches its public consultation on its application for Foundation Trust status on Monday 15 August 2005. The consultation ends on 4 November. The views of the Reading public will be forwarded on to the Department of Health in December 2005.

To obtain more information about the Trust’s application and to view the consultation document click here.

The Register’s Sean Fleming comments on the Oracle Corporation buildings at Thames Valley Park:

…faced with a shortage of human collateral what method of recruitment would you expect a major IT company to employ? Well, how about a large board, nailed up facing the nearby railway tracks that says come and work for Oracle.

Maybe the days of the IT recruitment Web site are numbered, maybe the future of IT is rooted firmly in the past - with wood and nails becoming the new stock in trade.

If you erect a large board next to one of the busiest rail routes in the UK, you are going to get the attention of train passengers. It’s highly-visible advertising. Many of these passengers are commuters. Many are professionals working in the IT industry or in international business. Furthermore, the Oracle word is a head-turner in the town - it is well-recognised as the name of Reading’s key shopping complex.

So, Oracle Corporation, keep it up.

The press has devoted ample coverage this week to the controversial issue of late drinking in England.

My feeling is that late drinking would result in an increase in anti-social behaviour.

As the Reading Chronicle opines in its Comment:

November 24 - when the government’s ill-conceived licensing laws come into force - will herald another lurch towards yet more drunken lawlessness on our streets.

We have enough drunk morons already, causing harm to each other and damaging property. So why does the Government believe that Continental-style drinking would emerge from the licensing changes? It is madness. Continue Reading »

Looking for a property? Here is something new to make that search easier: OnOneMap. This Google-powered search service displays properties for sale on a map of a chosen town or city. Enter Reading in the search box, for example, and a map of the town is presented, with icons marking the properties available on Reading’s streets. Click on an icon and you get a thumbnail of the property, its address, price and link to more information. You can also apply the following search filters: minimum/maximum beds, minimum/maximum prices and type of property. OnOneMap is very simple to use and nice to look at. It would work very well on a PDA/mobile, I should think.

Click here to visit the site.

Introducing the new Weekly Digest! No, it’s not food-related! It’s a service from that delivers the week’s blog entries straight to your e-mail inbox. Subscribe to this Digest and it will be zapped to your inbox every Sunday. Of course, you can always check online from time to time…

To subscribe to this wonderful service, click here.

The Evening Post reports that police officers in the town centre will have mobile video cameras strapped to their heads in a bid to cut drink-related violent disorder. The cameras will capture what the cops see, with the footage used later as court evidence. According to Andy Bagnall, Reading town centre inspector, drinkers modify their behaviour when they realise that their actions are being recorded. Yeah…right. Aren’t drinkers aware already of the high concentration of CCTV cameras in the town centre? And surely the camera softens the carrier’s image? Come on, we need to go back to basics to fight this urban disease - not a piece of gimmicky technology.

Click here to read the article.