The 2023 sugarcane harvest got off to a slow start today.Reports from some private cane farmers indicated that the large blue trucks/bins, which transport several tonnes of cane to Portvale Sugar Factory in Blowers, St James, arrived at a number of plantations late and caused some delays.Manager at Edgcumbe Plantation Richard Mayers said that his workers started cutting canes in Fire Hill, St George around 7 a.m. but the first blue bin arrived on site nearly an hour and a half later with the second one reaching the location at 11:20 a.m.At Drax Hall Plantation in St George, manager Phillip Whitehead said he also had challenges getting the canes transported to the factory.He said the first set of canes were cut around 8:30 a.m. and it took two hours for a blue bin to arrive.
Last modified on Mon 10 May 2021 06.56 EDT
As historian, biographer and documentary film-maker, Cate Haste, who has died aged 75 of lung cancer, explored remarkable lives and how people relate to each other, both historically and personally.
For Jeremy Isaacs’s 24-part series Cold War (1998) for BBC Two/CNN, covering the period from 1945 to 1991, she made five episodes. They told of how fear was mobilised both in the west and in eastern Europe, life behind the iron curtain, how the Berlin Wall was built, and in 1989 how it came down. Filming took her to the US, where President George HW Bush was a contributor, and to Prague, with Václav Havel, to recount how the Prague spring thaw in the Soviet bloc was crushed by invading tanks in 1968.
Nostalgia, royal navel-gazing and angst: modern Britain is in danger of repeating the mistakes of 40 years ago
âMargaret Thatcher spoke the populist language of patriotism and national destiny, and sometimes tilted towards the language of the far right.â Photograph: Rex Features
âMargaret Thatcher spoke the populist language of patriotism and national destiny, and sometimes tilted towards the language of the far right.â Photograph: Rex Features
Sun 18 Apr 2021 09.22 EDT
Last modified on Sun 18 Apr 2021 09.50 EDT
Midway through last week, I spent a couple of hours in Redditch, 15 or so miles south of Birmingham. My daughter plays the drums, and she wanted to see the new statue of the late John Bonham, who grew up in Redditch, joined the hugely successful hard rock group Led Zeppelin, and died a tragic death in 1980. We found the impressive memorial in the local market square â an obviously popular meeting place, sullied by a conspicuous line of vacant sho