Category: Announcements

Our next monthly meeting is on Weds 10th August, look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible. Please ensure that you enter the building from the car park rear entrance and book in at the desk.

Please try to remember to wear your name badges so that folks (especially new members) know who you are, if a group leader or committee member, again pleased wear your ID so that others know who they are talking to. I would remind us all (myself included) to either turn off or silence our mobile phones, we had several ringing last month during our guest speakers talk, not nice.

I trust that we are all coping with the very hot weather, whether at home or on holiday, please remember to use plenty of sun block and drink a lot of fluid.

This month’s guest speaker is David Skillen, talking about ‘Gretton Girls and Devils Porridge’ sounds intriguing.
After our coffee break a couple of our group leaders will be telling us about their group’s activities.

If you are a new member, looking for activity groups to join, there is now a list on our website showing which groups have vacancies, or talk to Sue Tedstone our groups’ co-ordinator.

As always, thanks to Steve for preparing and editing our newsletter, we are very lucky, not many u3a’s have monthly newsletters. However, even Steve has to have a holiday, so we are looking for a volunteer to prepare October’s newsletter at the end of September. If you can help, please talk to either myself or Steve.

Melvyn Francis,
Chair

The never-ending battle against fraudsters continues, we are still plagued with swindlers, fraudsters and scammers who are only too keen to relieve us of our well-earned cash. They also have absolutely no conscience and are more than happy to target the elderly.

Energy Crisis Scam
Due to the extreme increase in energy costs, scammers are exploiting the situation and our desire to cut costs by pretending to offer energy bill refunds to get your bank details and providing access to government grants to help with cost – BEWARE

Fake Energy Bill Rebate Scheme
It’s not taken long for scammers to jump on the back of soaring energy bills. Emails using the logo of the energy regulator Ofgem claim to offer an ‘energy bill rebate scheme’ worth up to £450 per household. The email gives a link to click on which directs you to a fake online portal where victims are urged to share personal and payment details in order to claim their refund. As always do not open the link and give no details

Fake BP Fuel Credit Cards
A scam offering petrol and diesel at reduced cost, all you have to do is purchase a prepaid card to get your discount, just sign up and pay, – too good to be true? Always a scam.

Car Insurance
Getting a quote or quotes online for your car insurance, then just after receiving your quote receiving an email offering to undercut all previous quotes and asking you to supply your bank details and sign up. This is called Ghost Broking.

Never give your bank details to anyone you don’t know or do not trust and never give your bank card PIN number to anyone you don’t trust implicitly. Likewise, your PIN number should never be written down. When drawing cash out of an ATM then always cover your hand as you enter your PIN number.

Our next monthly meeting is on Wednesday, 10th July, and I look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.
Please ensure that you enter the building from the car park rear entrance.

The good weather is among us, nice to see the sunshine after the cold winter and wet spring. A time for getting out and, if you are able, getting away on your holidays, short breaks or days out. Really hoping that the current airport delays and flight cancellations – more to come – do not affect any of us.

Don’t forget there are plenty of wonderful places in the UK to visit, I personally love the Scottish Highland, Snowdonia in Wales and love a long weekend close to home in the Peak District, we really are blessed with a wonderful choice.

Our guest speaker this month is a gentleman known as Andy McKinnon, who will be giving us a talk on the First World War, a topic that is no longer within living memory unless you are over 104 years old.

Following on from our coffee / tea break we will be hearing from Home-Start a charity that supports families with young children, run by local trained volunteers.

Looking forward to the both of the talks, and a big thankyou as always to Dianne our Speakers Secretary for arranging everything.

Our Treasurer will be back among us in the near future and the bank mandate resolved, so financial activity will soon be back to normal, thanks for your patience during this handover period from our ex-Treasurer Christine to our new Treasurer, Gary.

On our website, www.hucknallu3a.org.uk under the heading ‘Announcements’ there is a list of all of the groups that have vacancies and are looking for new members. However, should you want to join a group that is full, please speak to the group’s co-ordinator and/or Sue Tedstone who will be only too glad to give help and encouragement in helping you to start a new group. Hopefully when our current group leaders tell us what it is they do, it will encourage more of us to take a more active part.

Please approach any of the committee or indeed anyone, who will gladly lead you in the right direction.

As always, thanks to Steve for preparing and editing our newsletter, we are very lucky, not many u3as have monthly newsletters.

Melvyn Francis, Chair

Safety
As always, Covid is still amongst us with the latest ‘Omicron’ variants and quite a few among us are still catching it. If you have any of the symptoms, high temperature, persistent cough, loss of sense of taste and smell, sore throat or cold-like symptoms, please do not attend the monthly meetings or indeed any group meetings / activities.
We will be keeping all of the windows open, so please dress accordingly. If you feel more comfortable wearing a mask, please do so.

As always, please use the rear doors off the car park for access and ensure that you register yourself as attending. If leaving before the end of the meeting, it is important for health and safety reasons that you sign yourselves out.

Our meeting will start as normal at 2.00 pm, with a few announcements, followed by our guest speaker, Andy McKinnon, talking to us about the 1st World War.

After our coffee / tea break, we will be reconvening to hear a short talk from ‘Home-Start’.
Home-Start is a local community network of trained volunteers and expert support helping families with young children through their challenging times. They are there for parents when they need them the most because childhood can’t wait.