Category: Uncategorised

Topical Talk   –  National WI Campaigns for this Years Resolutions

Tuesday 18^th October 2016

Present : J Ch, J Su, S Pi, L Ba, J Co and W Ca.

Matters Arising from last meeting.

• J Ch had emailed Wight Bid with no response. After more research she now feels that this is not going to be a useful contact as it is mostly dealing with businesses and paying for marketing.
• J Ch has had no luck making contact with anyone from Public Affairs at WI House. She will keep trying.
• W Ca had emailed Fight for the Wight with no response. She will try to contact by phone.
• J Ch has been researching Parks Link and S Pi has been researching Changing Places , both may be useful links with regards to promoting better toilet provision on the IOW.
• This evening’s Parish Council meeting has an agenda item concerning the selling of the building that houses the village public toilets.

Campaign Against Food Waste

This basically involves 2 surveys, one for individual members to complete and another to be conducted within a local supermarket. The individual one takes about 15 minutes and can be completed online or as a paper copy. J Ch to circulate all information to our membership.

The supermarket questionnaire covered promotions and packaging of fruit, veg, meat, fish, eggs and diary  as well as the ‘once opened’ information on tins, jars etc. J Ch and W Ca were considered suitable to be let loose in Tesco and agreed to go on Wednesday 19^th.

Hospital Care for People With Dementia

This is information is in a glossy booklet format called Carers Welcome, containing a great deal of information and statistics, a Carers Welcome sign for display on hospital wards and a knitting pattern for sensory bands.

The booklet promoted a discussion similar to the original resolution. We still had reservations about this resolution and felt that some of the survey data is being used inappropriately.

• One suggested action was join the John’s Campaign Letter lobby. W Ca had emailed for the template but had not had a reply.
• W Ca will pass the sensory band pattern to J C-H for the consideration of craft club with the recommendation that the hospital be asked if they were wanted before any work was undertaken. We had concerns about the issue of hygiene.

 The next meeting will be at S Pi’s at 3pm on 6^th Dec.

BEMBRIDGE WINDMILL WI

Newsletter

December 2016

It was good to see so many of you at our Annual Meeting when the weather was so awful. Wasn’t the WI Advisor Sylvia lovely? She had come from East Cowes to join us for the meeting.

Yesterday we held our first committee meeting of the new WI year.  We discussed who would be doing what and below is a table with our roles and responsibilities. This year we have appointed 2 Vice-Presidents, (I need keeping in order), Chris B and Carol , our secretary is Sally and treasurer is Juliette.

We couldn’t let Di off her raffle duties and Linda O will be our membership secretary.

Two  groups will continue to operate the same with Brenda and Pam doing Book Club, Juliette and Wanda Topical Talk but Craft will now come under Joy and Chris B.

There may be some slight changes in January and we will keep all members up to date with these changes.

Book Club  – Will meet tomorrow evening Thursday 1st December at The Cloisters at 7.30pm all are welcome.

Topical Talk and Craft – No meetings until the New Year.  Dates will be sent out as soon as confirmed.

Invitation to all members for Friday 9th December – Joy has kindly invited us to attend the opening of the new accessible kitchen at the Riverside Centre between 11am and 1pm.  I will be going along and if any of you would like a lift please contact me and I will gladly take you.

IW Federation Christmas Fair – Friday 9th December 10am – 2pm at the Methodist Church, Quay Street, Newport.  Further details from Federation Office on 524716

Spithead Carol Service –  This is taking place at St John’s Church, Appley on Sunday 11th December at 2pm.  Carol will be doing a reading and there will be tea and mince pies afterwards.

Christmas Lunch – Wednesday 14th December at the Village Inn 12 for 12.30.  If you haven’t get signed up it is not too late but you haven’t got long.  Contact Sally. Jay and his team always make us very welcome.

OUR CHRISTMAS PARTY – REMEMBER THIS IS THE 2ND MONDAY THIS MONTH – 12TH DECEMBER.  As is usual we are asking members to bring along a plate of either savoury or sweet FINGER food as part of the celebration.  If there is any food left at the end of the evening we would be grateful if you would take it home with you.  Alongside this if you have any prizes suitable for our BIG CHRISTMAS RAFFLE we would be grateful for them.  This year we would like raffle prizes wrapped when handing them in but if you would tell Di what is in the parcel, it would help make the raffle a bit more exciting.

We hope that you will enjoy the entertainment we are planning for you, we are aiming for a fun but relaxed evening.

Christmas Cards – For those members who would prefer to make a donation to charity rather than send cards to members this year we will have a large card available for you to sign at the Christmas Party and a box for a donation.  Donations  will then be passed to the Hospice.

Breakfast at the Bakery – Monday 9th January 9.30am.  Sign up sheet at the next meeting.  I will also contact you all again nearer the time.

Resolutions for 2017 – These can be found in November’s WI Life.  The voting slip is also there and must be returned to WI House by 24th January 2017.  Late submissions will not be included.

The Cloisters – In line with the vote taken at the Annual Meeting all future meetings will be taking place at The Cloisters.

Foodbank –  Thank you to all of those that supported the Foodbank with Christmas goodies and food and thank you to Juliette and Joy for their help with this project.

Cause for 2017 – For those of you that were not at the meeting our fundraising next year will support Admiral Nurses for the Isle of Wight.

We look forward to seeing you all at our Christmas Meeting but if you are unable to attend the Committee send you Good Wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Topical Talk  – Follow-Up Discussion of Toilets on Isle Of Wight

Tuesday 6^th September 2016    –   3 – 5 pm

We began the meeting with an update on microbeads.

• Waitrose has announced that they are going to stop sales of any products containing microbeads.
• The Government is going to ban the use of microbeads in beauty products but not in cleaning products etc.
• JCh reminded us that even biodegradable plastics will still reduce down to microbeads. We need to continue to discuss ways to avoid using any plastics especially single use items.

Toilets

We considered the possibility of submitting a resolution to NFWI. Sally had produced an excellent draft. This needed to be decided quickly as the deadline was 14^th September. After debating whether we wanted to focus on local or national issues we realised that it need not be an either or situation. However we decided not to submit a resolution at this late stage but were quite buoyed up by the prospect of doing so in the future.

On the IOW 80% of the public toilets are now the responsibility of the Parish Councils and local precepts have risen, however, we are still concerned about the lack of facilities in local tourist areas especially at St Helen’s Beach and also at the RNLI station, where only one is in use and were not compliant with planning regulations when built. This is in contrast to our recent experiences in tourist spots on the mainland especially the exemplary examples photographed by JCo at Woolacombe Bay.

We believe that there has got to be an Island-wide strategic plan to promote the tourism and that this must include the provision of good quality public toilets.

Our strategic plan is …

• To contact all Island WIs asking for information about the toilets in their area. Where are they? When are they open? Is information about opening given? Is there advice about where to go if closed? Should more be provided? Are they up to standard – Would you be happy to use them?
• To propose to the committee that Alan Marriot from Fight for the Wight be invited to speak at one of our meetings. ( action – GR)
• Continue fact finding by contacting Destination Island to see if they are including toilet provision in their campaigns and also contact WI Island Federation Public Affairs Committee (who knew there was one?) for advice. (action – JCh)
• Research the work of the British Toilet Association. (action – whole group).

 Date of the next meeting –   Tuesday 18^th October 3-5 pm at JCh’s

Topics for Discussion: Involvement in the current WI resolutions (1) Food Waste and (2) Dementia Care in Hospitals. Packs are to be sent to each WI with information on how to support the campaigns.

Issues that may also be of interest are …the possible changes to the funding of Attendance Allowance and  information on Doctors’ Funding.

Our “Christmas” meeting held on Thursday 1^st December was well attended with 18 members (perhaps the promise of foodie nibbles and wine may have been a bit of a draw of course?).

Brenda commenced proceedings by welcoming everyone and our new member Brenda L. to the meeting and then reading out the apologies from those few unable to be with us for the evening.  She then asked everyone in turn for their  comments on the book and it quickly became very apparent that absolutely everyone enjoyed this book immensely.  The positive comments were echoed around the room and kept coming with members “running out” of different “nice” expressions to describe their feelings that had not already been mentioned by others before them  – here are just a few :-

Engaging ; easy read; flowing ; naive; happy; lovely; innocent, fairytale; magical; sang out; enjoyable; delicious……………

All agreed that the storyline although wonderfully predictable, was a delightful one with everyone saying that they wanted to keep reading on to know what was going to happen next. A quick and easy read, with even our lovely Jeanie saying how much she enjoyed it (Yes she actually read this one!!!) Members also felt that the settings were good and evocative of the deep South with it being quite easy to get used to the “Americanisms” of the text. All wished that life could be just like that as described in the book with everything that is happening and going on in the World today.

Nearly everyone had felt quite emotional when Jack died with some  even shedding a tear or two (well quite a few of us actually !!) Everyone loved Oswald as their favourite character (well maybe apart from Jack of course!) with Mildred being described as feisty and with members quite loving the Community of Lost River generally. It was also thought that the storyline was believable for the period in which we thought it was set – although it was fairly difficult to put an exact date era on it, as the only specified date actually mentioned in the book, was when the original hotel burned down in 1911 !?  After a discussion most were happy to imagine that the book was possibly set around the 1950/1960s.

So in summing up A storyteller book where snippets fell out of the pages of a naive and innocent predictable but totally delightful and enjoyable short story with a lovely happy ending (one perhaps that could be found in a copy of  “Woman’s Weekly” maybe!) A delicious fairytale just perfect as a Christmas read and absolutely totally loved by us all.