If you have a green project on the go this is the place to tell your story.

I am putting together a series of articles on Lancashire's green credentials: everything from Lancashire's greenest businesses, if that sounds like you then I need to know, and Lancashire's greenest households:
How green is your house? Do you have ground soruce heating? Collect rainwater, use 'grey water' to flush? What about solar panels or wind turbines?
Whether it's about pollution, waste, and recycling, alternative energy forms, climate change prevention, greener transport initiatives ... if you have anything you'd like to share about the green credentials in your community then please let me know.
NOTE: We are the Lancashire Evening Post so I am looking for GREEN stories within the Central Lancashire area - that is from Ormskirk and Chorley up through Preston to Lancaster and Morecambe!

Well we've had the carnival, the mela and it seems there's a fete or gala every weekend but there is one this weekend that I felt deserves a special mention, as it's their first, we hope, of many.
Folk in Clayton Brook, near Chorley, got together and decided they wanted to do something to mark their difference as individuals and togetherness as a community by organising a multicultural festival.
Now, after months of planning and fundraising the festival is finally here, nearly.
It takes place on Saturday June 19 at Clayton Brook Village Green from 12noon to 8pm.
And there'll be dancing (clog, Bangra and to that Bollywood hit - Ji-ho), singing (folk, jazz), drumming (African) plus craft workshops and plenty of scrummy food (from all corners of the globe of course).
If anyone is reading this and is going or has been and wants to send a picture into the Lancashire Evening Post then please email: lep.picturedesk@lep.co.uk with your name and details. Thanks!

How many times do you find yourself stopping and saying to yourself where was I? It happens to me all the time. Specially working on the web most of the time it's very hard not to get sidetracked or bamboozled my some web thing or other and find yourself a dozen clicks away before you stop and say: where was I?
Anyway, this is where I ended up today and thought it was quite a good waste way to spend 5 minutes:
http://faceinspace.nasa.gov/index.aspx

This blog from now on and henceforth shall be named: Never mind the hype, because I say so.

We may have changed the way we look online but we still value what our readers and web audience think and say about us, about the news, and about the community in general.
So, you'll still find a featured blogs page on our website where we feature some in house and some external bloggers that we think are interesting, different, important and of course, funny!
If you think your blog deserves a mention - then drop me an email josie.hill@lep.co.uk saying a bit about yourself and why you think your blog is great.
Note: We are looking for local bloggers so if you are outside of the Central Lancashire areas or have no connections here then we would not consider featuring your blog on www.lep.co.uk.

We hope you haven't noticed too many changes on www.lep.co.uk, because in the background, for the past few weeks, the digital team here at the LEP have been quietly running two websites.

Yes, it's true, we are getting a new website, and it's simpler and cleaner in design, but as with so many of these things, has not been without it's technical hitches, hence the delay in going live.

It now looks like it'll be sometime next week: but if you can't wait that long and want to see what it looks like now, follow this link: the new lep website

This article  explains more about the new website and how it works.

Please feel free to take a look and add your comments below.

I've been away for what seems like an eternity - 12 months or thereabouts - on maternity leave. And I'm glad to say that while I love singing nursery rhymes and wiping up spilt food, puke and poo - there is a limit!

Thankfully I am in the fortunate position to have been able to come back to work part time, best of both worlds, which means I am now working from Wednesdays to Fridays following community events and news here in Preston for the Lancashire Evening Post.

Strange really. In some ways it seems like nothing changes; the coffee machine still charges too much for a very poor beverage which we all drink anyway because there is no alternative. But in other ways changes come and spin everyone around leaving us all a bit bewildered and confused; like the new system that has just been implemented here.

We have started working with an editorial content management tool called Atex/ Prestige which enables reporters to write straight into boxes on pages in the paper. But like any new system, it has its teething problems, not least among them the stark fact that some people here will lose there jobs in a few weeks time.

And the website is also about to change to a simpler and cleaner looking one which I am currently working on to help make sure everything is as it should be before we completely shut down the old one, sometime later this month we hope.

Meanwhile, as ever I am contactable here by email: josie.hill@lep.co.uk or phone: 01772 554505 for all your community news queries, or if you would like to submit your content for publication on www.lep.co.uk

Launched just a few short weeks ago this new feature has really taken off.
In short, people send in poems, I upload them to Tell me a Poem on lep.co.uk, people read and listen to the poems, then vote for their favourite, and the winner gets published in the following week's Week Ahead supplement in Saturdays' edition of the Lancashire Evening Post. Simple!
And in a matter of days the response has been incredible. Poets are coming out of the woodwork and proudly sharing their musings on the world, however they are articulated, however short or wordy, direct or roundabout, they are finding their way into the limelight on lep.co.uk.
And if you are reading this and thinking this might be of interest to you.... get in touch, there is always room for more!
Over and out,
Josie
josie.hill@lep.co.uk
01772838104