Our very own fountain of knowledge of all things legal, BRIAN HUGHES, consultant solicitor of Shenfield based solicitors, RAINER HUGHES joined me once more this afternoon and today turned his attention to consumer rights.

The fact is that every time we buy anything from purchasing groceries to taking out a mortgage we are entering a contract, but do we all know and understand our rights?

Listen again here to what Brian had to say on this subject: –

In the second hour of today’s programme, we heard that someone has bid the tidy sum of $3.3m (£2.5m) to have lunch in a Manhattan based steakhouse with 87-year old Warren Buffett, who earlier this year was placed third on the Forbes rich list.

The winning bidder will be able to take up tom 7 friends with them.

I’ll put money on Mr Buffett getting his meal for free, but maybe he’ll leave a tip.

One tip the guests will not get from Mr Buffett is what stocks he might invest in next, but other than that they will be free to discuss anything with him.

Well at that price you’d certainly hope so.

Right I’m off now to grab a sandwich and I’ll see you again tomorrow,
Scott

On today’s show we heard about the hotel valet who had a really bad day at the office after the car he was parking ended up under another vehicle, whilst impaling a third vehicle on concrete posts.

In truth a Porsche can be a difficult beast to control if you are unfamiliar with them as they are apt to “take off” the minute you slip them into Drive, and with an ability to accelerate from 0 to 60mph in under 5 seconds, parking them needs a lot of skill and care.

In this case it was a literal pile up as when the valet slipped the Porsche into Drive, it immediately hit an orange SUV, becoming neatly stashed away under that vehicle whilst pushing a third car into some posts for good measure.

Oops!

Later in the show we heard about the tele-evangelist who is really reaching for the stars.

Yes, Louisiana based JESSE DUPLANTIS, who runs Jesse Duplantis Ministries claims that during a divine conversation, Jesus ordered him to persuade his followers to stump up the readies to buy a brand new DASSAULT FALCON 7X for just $54m.

Duplantis goes on to tell his followers that jets, especially nice ones with good fuel efficiency, allow him and his ministries to reach more people around the world. 

“All it’s gonna do is it’s going to touch people, it’s going to reach people, it’s going to change lives one soul at a time,” Duplantis said of the aircraft.

“I really believe that if Jesus was physically on the earth today, he wouldn’t be riding a donkey,” he added.

According to prosperity gospel preachers and believers, nice things like jets and cars and rent money are God’s way of blessing people for a faithful life.

And by their logic sharing your wealth with the church will make God bless you even more.

So now you know!

I’ll see you again next week,
Scott

I was joined today by JULIE EASLIE from KINETIKA who have been arranging annual walking festivals in Essex.

Over the past 3 years, Kinetika’s project, Thurrock 100, has mapped and explored 31 local walks, run a dance programme and published a book of 100 local stories and engaged with literally thousands of people.

This year’s walking programme runs between the 7th and 22nd July and will be incorporating the diverse food cultures which exist across the area, and by introducing a new 2-year Kitchen Table project, they aim to explore the stories of the diverse communities from around the world who have settled along the lower Thames Estuary.

A special date for your diary is 20th June when a SCREEN PRINTING WORKSHOP for adults only,  is being held between 10am and 6pm. This workshop is going to be producing a silk tablecloth, which will be carried on all the walks and then laid out in style on Saturday 21st July to celebrate the Chilean Community Feast in La Cocina Publica at the Port of Tilbury.

This workshop will be supervised by artist, Sofie Layton, and held at the Kinetika Studio, 119 Artists Studios, High House Production Park, Artisan Way, Off Purfleet Bypass, Purfleet, Essex RM19 1AS.

You can get more information about this at the KINETIKA website – http://www.kinetikaonline.co.uk/site/ .

For the walks go to http://thurrock100.com/

Listen again here to what Julie told me about how they are linking food experiences into the T100 Recipe walks which are being especially planned and led by volunteers well-versed in the geography and history of the area: –

In the second hour today we heard about the council workmen, who might feel that they ought to go back to school for some extra tuition, after they misspelt the word SCHOOL in the road outside the entrance to a primary school in the Wirral.

Wonderful!

I’m not here tomorrow so I’ll see you next on Thursday,
Scott

I was honoured to be joined on today’s show by two legends from the world of jazz – Keith Ball also known as Kenny Ball Jnr, son of the one and only Kenny Ball and Peter Corrigan who has been putting together jazz concerts for donkeys years full of some of the biggest names from the world of jazz. 

Peter brought his BAND OF HOPE to the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch back in February 1976 and in 10 days time on the 17th June, he and Keith will be back there together again to present JAZZ THROUGH THE AGES.

Listen again here to what Keith and Peter had to tell me today:-

Later in the programme we heard about how someone, although being investigated for misconduct, was granted 7 months compassionate leave from her £45,000 a year job due to stress resulting from that very misconduct hearing.

So stressed was Sgt Leanne Carr of Lincolnshire police, that during this compassionate leave, she posted a steady stream of photos on her Facebook page showing her taking in the sun in Cyprus, snorkelling in Thailand, snowboarding in the Austrian Alps, plus a trip to Cape Town in South Africa.

Now in most places where I’ve worked, if you were stressed by the pressure of work, you would be  told that if the heat was too much for you, you should “get out of the kitchen”. And if you had been under investigation for any kind of misdemeanour, “that would have been that”. 

Things are clearly rather different in some parts of the the public sector!

See you again next week – if I can stand the pace!
Scott  

News is just in from Canada that a wild life animal park is in trouble for failing to tell police that they were taking one of their charges – a bear no less – out for an ice cream, as a treat!

Not too surprisingly the zoo’s permit requires them to alert authorities when any animals are moved from the zoo.

Furthermore members of the public are also prohibited from having any contact with animals like bears, and presumably this also includes ice cream vendors!

Later in the show, Margaret Mills dropped by to tell us about a one-time benefactor of Billericay, a man who rejoiced in the somewhat unusual name of Thomas Jenner Spitty.

You can listen again here to what Margaret told me today:-

See you again next time,
Scott

The BIG question we posed today was when is “ART” real and when is it just a heap of rubbish?

It seems that a self-styled anonymous artist in Oxford could be dumping his unwanted items in public areas, but passing them off as pieces of artwork.

It has been alleged that he dumped an old washing machine in an underpass to which he attached a notice reading, “Please use this machine to cleanse your mind of all prejudices and negative preconceptions relating to contemporary art.”

Perhaps not too surprisingly, Oxford City Council, concluded that the item was rubbish and had it removed, but the artist hit back, telling THE BIG ISSUE that the machine was already there, when he came across it and that he had reused it with a sign that transformed the item so that it became something else.

Meanwhile at the other end of the scale, high end Fashion designer, BELENCIAGA, as part of their Autumn collection, has just released the so-called T-Shirt Shirt which is a plain blue T-Shirt with a standard check shirt pinned to the front of it.

Quite whether anyone would want to wear such a bizarre item is open to question, as well as whether anyone would be willing to shell out the eye watering £935 price tag!

Sounds a bit like the song about The King’s New Clothes to me.

See you again tomorrow,
Scott

We heard the sad tale today of the couple who lost their car.

Now I’ll be totally honest, I have an enormous amount of sympathy for this couple.

Have you ever parked your car and then not been able to find it?

I did once in a multi-story carpark in Ilford which had two identical sides – mirror images of each other and, of course, I was in the wrong one; and I know of someone else who went to a motorway service area but when they came out went to the car park on the wrong side of the motorway.

Anyway 79 year old M/S Farmer, dropped her 81-year old partner, Emmanuel Elliott, off for a hospital appointment last Friday afternoon and then went off to try to find a parking space.

Unfortunately after the appointment the poor lady couldn’t remember where she’d left the vehicle.

Family and friends of the couple, from Gloucester, then spent four days searching for the car before it was eventually located in a car park just 900 metres from the hospital and had been ticketed no less than three times by wardens.

Although Cheltenham Borough Council yet to agree to waive the charges, a spokesman suggested that the couple use the authority’s appeals process and indicated that the issue was likely to be considered sympathetically.

I really do feel for them.

Margaret Mills returned today to regale the tale of a very unorthodox military detachment that existed in Rochford during the period of the Napoleonic wars.

Listen again here to what Margaret had to say on this subject: –

See you once more next week,
Scott

I was joined on this Bank Holiday by RON RIDGE from the Brentwood section of First Responders, who have been operating in Essex for over 20 years.

The original aim of the organisation was to provide early pre-hospital care to people living in areas that can be difficult to reach within those life critical early minutes following a heart attack, cardiac arrest or where a patient has lost consciousness.

You can listen here in more detail to what Ron told me about the organisation:-

If you are interested in joining, or perhaps helping First Responders, why not contact Ron by e-mail  – ron@ez32.org or via responderadmin@eastamb.nhs.uk or take a look at their website http://EZ32.org

Later in the programme we heard about the Ohio man who called police after he found that he was being stalked on his way home by a pig!

And no he wasn’t drunk, he was truly being followed by the pig as it wanted to be petted!

Well there’s a thing!

See you once more tomorrow,
Scott