THIS WEEK IN 1991:
LOCAL waterways in Worcestershire are once again polluted with the poisonous blue-green algae which can make adults seriously ill and has killed animals. Early reports from the National Rivers Authority show that the algae has been found in local recreational lakes, including those at Upton Warren and Ball Mill, Grimley, and also along stretches of the Worcester-Birmingham Canal. The infected water looks like pea green soup and can cause skin ailments on contact. If swallowed, it can cause tummy upsets, nausea and even hepatitis.

Around the country the algae scum has already been responsible for the deaths of 20 sheep and 15 dogs which drank it. Fishermen, boaters and sail-boarders are being urged to take care not to swallow the water.

THIS WEEK IN 1981:
FROM the Jottings column of Berrow’s Worcester Journal. Flaunting the flag.

It’s all very well for complaints to be made about the image of Prince Charles and Lady Diana being used on T-shirts, but what about the misuse of our national flag, the Union Jack? It has been used on kitchen aprons, shopping bags, T-shirts and even, I believe, on shorts so that it can be sat on! But to my mind the worst kind of abuse of the old flag is by political parties. The mass of Union Jacks carried by the extreme right British Movement in their march through the city centre was an insult to the flag. Their message, apparently, was that they alone represent the true feelings of Old England.

What rot!

THIS WEEK IN 1971:
THE Worcester City Show suffered a loss of £2,000 this year against a deficit of £2,800 last August but, despite these depressing figures, the chairman David Inight is planning for a three-day event next year. A breakdown of the figures suggests that overhead costs on a two-day event are the same as those for three days, and Mr Inight also plans to make admission free to encourage people to come in and look round. He said: “The salvation of the City Show is the third day. We can attract more traders and ask them to pay more to sell their goods at a longer show.”

THIS WEEK IN 1961:
PADDED cells, locked wards and shuttered windows are all things of the past at Powick Hospital, stresses its medical superintendent, Dr AM Spencer in the hospital’s latest newsletter. In many ways, he writes, the hospital has come to the end of an era. No longer are there any wards to which patients can be sent for misbehaviour or for absconding. There are now doctors and nurses on the staff who have never seen a padded room and “this is all to the good but we need to remember that these repressive things can return and may well do so unless we build a new community on a more satisfactory foundation.”

Dr Spencer says the hospital is now a freer place than it was.