24th August 1938 – 14th October 2024
Valerie passed away peacefullt at The Hayes Care Home, Sherborne. Wife of the late Gordon Phillips, a dearly loved mum, nanny and great nanny, who will be missed by all who knew her.
The Funeral Service will be at Sedgemoor Crematorium on Thursday 31st October at 11am.
Family flowers only, donations for The Alzheimer’s Society may be sent to the Funeral Directors, Crescent Funeral Services, Bow Street, Langport, Somerset, TA10 9PQ.
Tel 01458 252505.
As good as it sounds, managing a medical practice brings unique financial difficulties that can be overwhelming for those lacking specific knowledge. This article will analyse the specific financial problems characteristic of medical practices in the area of Dorset and how essential healthcare accounting is for local medical practitioners.
You will find out about certain areas of medical accountants’ activities, the need to get sound healthcare sector-specific expert advice, and the effect the choice of an accountant can exert on the efficiency and viability of a practice.
Healthcare accounting is not only about accounting but also about understanding and addressing medical care providers’ real and unique financial issues. Such accountants are useful to the medical sector as their services are geared towards the medical sector, enabling the practice of providing patient care while maintaining sound economic health.
Issues related to healthcare clients, such as differences in reimbursement rates from various insurance companies, strict regulatory compliance, and specific tax requirements, require a type of professional that general accountants may not possess.
By grasping the nuances of healthcare accounting, medical professionals can navigate these challenges more effectively. With specialised accounting for doctors and medical professionals, practices can enhance their financial performance, improving patient care. Thoughtful financial management can foster better cash flow, ensuring practices can cover operational costs and invest in critical services without delay.
Incorporating healthcare accounting enables practices in Dorset to improve their financial toils and set an excellent foundation for endurance in a competitive landscape.
Without specialised accounting, medical practices often encounter several financial obstacles. Cash flow problems can stem from delayed insurance reimbursements or missed billing opportunities, adversely affecting a practice’s ability to offer continuous care. Moreover, poor financial practices may also result in legal noncompliance, which may lead to sanctions imposed by future tax authorities or social oversight bodies, a big healthcare problem.
Deficient financial management has a knock-on effect on a range of issues, including staffing and availability of patients. In business practices, if a practice cannot contain the stores of its funds, it might have to either downsize its activities or close its doors. Hiring a specialist medical accountant team can reduce these concerns; with proper financial management and control, the problems with compliance and pressure on the practice can be less invasive.
Understanding these pressures facilitates medical practitioners to reach out for relevant assistance and helps them concentrate on providing the best care to patients without the burden of any financial violation.
Medical accountants can offer several medical accounting services suited to the diverse needs of a medical practice, facility or organisation. One of the services, tax management, is where accountants have specialists. With the relevant medical practice accounting for taxes, they can lower their tax exposure while avoiding legal transgressions.
Also important for the immediate future outward look is strategic and budgetary assistance. A medical practice accounting team will be able to develop strategies that will assist the practice in the short term and growth plans with a long-term orientation.
Numerous regulations govern the healthcare sector, and having a knowledgeable accounting partner can significantly impact a practice’s success. They can guide medical practices through intricate compliance requirements, ensuring operations adhere to UK Health and Social Care guidelines. This support can create a strong foundation for medical partnership businesses and contribute to a stable operating environment.
Choosing the right healthcare accountant enables a medical practice to exceed its targets. Some of the most important issues are:
The advantages associated with healthcare accounting are not just limited to financial management in the short term. With efficient accounting, medical practices can streamline operations while cutting unnecessary expenses. Keeping a close eye on the financial standing helps practices identify weaknesses and take the right action for future growth.
As the healthcare landscape changes continuously, so does the practice environment, including changes in regulations and patient access. This is where a financial consultant comes in, and their key responsibilities include helping the practices adapt to constant changes through proper planning and financial insight.
We were thrilled to host some of Dorset’s finest producers at the 2024 Love Local Awards. Founded six years ago, the LLTL campaign promotes trust in local, British produce and food labelling, valuing quality, honesty, and proximity. Every entrant’s journey was inspiring, making judging tough.
This year’s winners:
This month Barry Cuff has chosen two postcards more modern than usual, and scenes no doubt familiar to older locals. Both were sent by holidaymakers on the coast – Charmouth and West Bay.
Sent in May 1966 to Mrs B Newey of 80 Carless Avenue, in Birmingham. Gresham House was previously Sea House, but new owners from Gresham Street in London had changed it to a hotel at the turn of the century. In the 70s it became the Sea Horse Hotel, and was demolished in 1990, replaced by a block of apartments of the same name.
‘Gresham House Hotel, Charmouth, May 21st. Very many thanks for letter which I will answer when I get home. Tish (?) fetched me last Tues & we arrived in time for lunch, & Jill is going to take us back to-morrow morning. Feel a lot better for the rest & change & all the nice meals put in front of me. Mrs Mac is off work with nervous debility! Luckily Mrs Amor is OK, Mr & Mrs Davis (one of Mrs Barnard’s daughters) called yesterday. She has grown awfully like her mother! Do hope you are OK. I will write soon. much love Violetta’
The West Bay postcard was sent on 6th October 1970. In 1884 the Great Western Railway was extended from Bridport down to the harbour. The new station was initially called Bridport Harbour, but it was soon renamed Bridport West Bay by the GWR to attract day trippers and holidaymakers to the seaside by rail. Some older 19th century maps referred to the stretch of sea in the area as West Bay so this must have influenced the new name, although it was neither west of Bridport nor a bay! Soon the whole settlement was known as West Bay.
‘Tues. Thanks for letter. Crossed with mine. Shall be on my way from here on Thurs. Have loved being here. Guess you would like it too. Love to all. Hope for good news of G soon. Love Betty’
PLUMBER MANOR hotel at Sturminster Newton requires a head housekeeper for 5 mornings a week (including some weekend work).
8am-12.30pm but hours are variable depending on occupancy.
Pleasant working conditions doing up to 16 bedrooms and bathrooms to a high standard. Previous experience would be helpful and references required as you would also be in contact with our guests.
Own transport essential and ability to work on your own and as part of a team.
Duties will include managing the rotas for your team, liasing with the laundry service and the office staff for supplies.
Please email [email protected] with your CV.
If you have any queries please ring 01258 472507.
The Year Clock brings William Barnes, Dorset’s self-educated teacher and parson, to life through notes, anecdotes, newspaper reports, and personal letters either written by or about Barnes during his lifetime. Written in 2001 by Tim Laycock, the play explores the inner tensions of a highly educated man who chose to write in the rural dialect of Dorset, highlighting the contrast between the rapid industrialisation of Victorian England and the traditional way of life that was slowly disappearing – a theme with striking relevance today.
William Barnes was best known for his Dorset dialect poetry – most famously, Linden Lea, which was set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. However, Barnes himself regarded his work in philology – his study of more than sixty languages, and his search for the root of all speech – as his most significant achievement, particularly his Philological Grammar.
Thomas Hardy, Barnes’ contemporary and long-time friend, once described him as “the most interesting link between the past and present forms of rural life that England possessed.” Similarly, Francis Kilvert who visited Barnes at his rectory in Winterborne Came in 1874, called him “the great idyllic poet of England, half hermit, half enchanter.”
The poems and songs woven into The Year Clock were written between 1835 and 1870, with the exception of the final piece, The Geate a-Vallen To, which was dictated to his daughter shortly before his death in 1886.
Accompanied by Dorset folk music, performed on the violin and guitar by Colin Thompson, the performance is a vivid, fast-paced portrayal of Barnes’ world, offering a poignant reflection on the forces of change.
Directed by Sonia Ritter, The Year Clock is a revival that connects the past with the present – it has been performed more than 70 times to date, and could not have been written without access to the William Barnes Archive.
A funding revival
The revival of The Year Clock are more than a tribute to William Barnes – it’s part of an ongoing effort to preserve his legacy through the ‘Barnes for All!’ fundraising campaign. When Barnes passed away, he left a rich archive of writings, including poems, sermons, posters, woodcuts, and engravings. This invaluable collection offers a glimpse into Victorian Dorset and Barnes’ creative and intellectual world.
Now owned by the Dorset Museum and Art Gallery and housed at the Dorset History Centre, the collection has been cared for by the William Barnes Society for many years. The ‘Barnes for All!’ project aims to make this collection more accessible by cataloguing each item to international standards and digitising key documents for online access.
Once completed, this digital archive will open up Barnes’ life and works to a global audience. Scholars, enthusiasts and anyone interested in Barnes’ contributions as a schoolmaster, priest, poet and philologist will be able to explore his world in detail – bringing Victorian England and rural Dorset to life.
The campaign’s goal is to raise £35,000, and every penny from events like The Year Clock performance will go towards making the archive available for future generations. This project not only honours the poet himself but also preserves the cultural heritage of rural England that Barnes cherished.
24th October, Dorchester, 7pm.
Tickets £20: DorsetMuseum
3rd November, Sturminster Newton, 3pm
Tickets £20: The Exchange
To learn more or make a donation, visit williambarnessociety.org.uk
We must build many more affordable houses in this country. I lived in Stevenage until I was nine years old. My parents moved there from London to have a family, after leaving Northern Ireland a few years earlier to enjoy the swinging sixties. The new town of Stevenage was a triumph of central planning, but it took many years to become a vibrant, settled place.
The genesis for Stevenage was in the post-war years of reconstruction. The story of the Labour minister breaking the news to the townspeople in a small, crowded hall remains recognisable today. As the then Minister of town and country planning, Lewis Silkin, stood before the anxious residents, he announced a bold vision for Stevenage – the first of the new towns designed to solve the post-Second World War housing crisis and urban congestion. The initiative was part of the broader New Towns Act of 1946, which aimed to create self-contained communities with adequate housing, jobs and amenities, reflecting the utopian ideals of the era.
Silkin was lucky to get away from the meeting without injury. The angry residents let down his car tyres, hurled abuse at him and changed the signs on the town to “Silkingrad”. I have no doubt that Angela Raynor is just as robust, but times change and people are even less inclined to defer to authority today.
There is renewed talk of new towns. Not here in North Dorset, but Stevenage illustrates that bold visions do not become reality without top-down direction and overcoming objections. Labour proposes to rekindle that spirit and suppress NIMBYism. They say they are prepared to be unpopular.
That’s all fine … but I am confident that without the consent of affected communities, the targets will not be met and the outcome will be at risk.
That is why Liberal Democrats prefer to agree to support good development and oppose bad development. We want great homes for people and we adopted higher targets than Labour, because that is what younger people demanded and so clearly need. The difference between good and bad development depends on swift engagement, genuine exploration and transparent decisions between local and national government and communities.
Our planning system is rightly cited as a major blocker to development: but the question of what is in it for the affected community must be answered, and the consequences understood. I know that Nick Ireland and the Liberal Democrat controlling group at Dorset Council have set out a vision for future housing in Dorset, and we look forward to the community engagement that will secure more houses while retaining support.
We need to give more people the chance to enjoy our Dorset life and build their future here. We need to do that by urgently building community consent and backing the vision for good development.
Gary Jackson
North Dorset LibDems
From cover crops to clever seed mixing, George Hosford is balancing the harvest chaos with new technology and sustainable farming practices
It seems so long ago that we started harvest, way back in mid July – it turned out to be one of those long drawn out affairs, very much stop/start due to the weather. We started with cutting the plot of turnips destined for sowing again this year as seed in our cover crop mixes, swiftly followed by the crimson clover plot for the same purpose, and then the phacelia. Since they were all sown in autumn, they ripened much earlier than the buckwheat, vetch and camelina, which need to be sown in spring as they rarely survive the harsh winter cold.
Staying on the cover crop theme, we have ramped up our seed mixing system a good deal this year. We have purchased a selection of Tote Bins that each hold up to 1.5 tons of grain or seeds, and a brand new pan mixer (usually intended for mixing concrete!). These additions have revolutionised the set up. Formerly we were hand-blending purchased bags of seeds into a feed barrow, then bagging up 20kg at a time … all a bit tedious after the first 20 bags! Now we are mixing 600kg at a time, using mainly home-grown seeds which have been combined, dried if necessary, placed in a Tote Bin, then weighed directly into the mixer. The mixer sits on a pair of weigh bars, which are another essential ingredient for this new system. Once mixed, the blend – often containing up to drying, which I had hoped would shrivel them smaller and make them easier to remove, far too many remain. A cleaning charge will have to be faced, as running over a gravity separator off-farm may be the only way to clean them out.
Modern farmers will be yelling at the screen right now, asking why on earth did we not use more weedkiller to solve the cleaver problem? But the simple answer is, we couldn’t, because the contract we have with Wildfarmed for combination crops stipulates no weedkiller or fungicide, and only limited amounts of artificial fertiliser.
What are cover crops?
‘We plant cover crops, also known as “green manure”, in fields that will be left fallow over the winter before a spring crop is sown,’ says George. ‘These crops protect the soil from harsh weather and absorb any remaining nutrients from the previous crop, preventing them from leaching into watercourses.’
However, early gross margin calculations are showing that these two particular combinations have performed significantly better than any solo spring bean or linseed crop, and in fact compare favourably with our other crops, apart from the first wheats.
The winter wheat with beans blend, however, was awful: riddled with disease and very short on yield, despite having looked strong for much of the season.
The lateness of sowing the spring wheat/bean blend put the lid on our yield hopes, but we hoped it would be better than the winter blend. We were very pleased, then, to find the wheat met quality standards, and should get the full premium, leading to a useful margin compared with our other crops.
The millet looked fantastic throughout the summer, but knowing when to cut was a challenge, as the leaves were still very green when the seeds were beginning to turn.
As I write at the end of September, I am still drying that darn millet: it’s now had six runs through the drier. I think we cut it a bit early due to trying to beat forecast rain.
Homemade pig porridge
Three very greedy young pigs were with us for the summer, enjoying an entirely home-grown diet for the first time. Our local mobile feed wagon called in to mill up some wheat, barley, peas and beans, to which I add 10 per cent protein-rich rape meal from which we have already squeezed the oil, and mixed the lot into a yummy porridge. They appear to approve the recipe, anyway, slurping it down in seconds. And they are certainly growing well on it – they look like they will perform at least as well as their predecessors who were fed on purchased weaner pellets (which no doubt contain imported soya from who knows where).
around in super-cooled hi tech cabins with satnav doing all the steering …
Read 15 years of George’s monthly farm diary on
viewfromthehill.org.uk
The Conservative leadership contest is down to its final four candidates: Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat. The Tory MPs will decide who the final two candidates are – Simon please choose well if you’re reading this – and then the party membership will vote for their leader. I have no skin in the game here, but I do care about our country, and a strong country requires not only a strong government but also strong opposition. It’s vital the Tories break the habit of the past half-decade and choose the right leader this time.
Let’s review the past three leaders of the Conservatives. There was Boris Johnson, who had a moral compass akin to a real compass in a solar storm. Liz Truss who delivered ‘a true Tory Budget’ which wiped £30 billion of the UK economy … that’s £666m for every day of her premiership.
Finally, Rishi Sunak – who promised integrity, honesty and accountability on day one … and then several hours later reinstated Suella Bravermen as a minister, just days after she resigned due to breaking government rules.
Let’s leave these standards in the past. The country doesn’t need an opposition leader like Robert Jenrick, who oversaw the covering-up of children’s cartoon murals in UK asylum centres. How devoid of empathy must one be, to deny children a brief moment of relief during such a traumatic time?
I want the Conservative Party to return to a place where people like Rory Stewart or Anna Soubry are welcome – both were culled in 2019. While I might disagree with some of their ideas, I know they come from a place of rational thought and compassion. I don’t want the Conservatives’ gambit to be winning back voters from Farage’s Reform party by demonising immigration, or to withdraw from the ECHR – something which was conceptually endorsed by that little-known British Conservative Sir Winston Churchill.
I want the Conservatives to offer sensible policies: not those deemed likely to win a demographic of voter, but those which can be backed up by data, approved by experts and which are morally just. I have faith in Sir Keir Starmer’s government to deliver real change to the country and give us a platform where we can solve the issues brought about from 14 years of Tory government.
However, I believe the best version of government occurs when there is also the best version of opposition. Proper opposition will hold a government to account and offer fair scrutiny of its actions.
So, to anyone with a vote on who the next Conservative leader will be, please vote for the candidate that will return the Conservatives to sensible politics, and not the candidate who wants to appease the far right, or wants the UK to leave the ECHR, because that is the politics of division. As a reminder to you, we’re the United Kingdom.
Guy Perkins
North Dorset Labour
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