East Kilbride is the biggest town in Scotland so its local newspaper has a lot to cover including…read moresome affluent areas some less affluent areas. The area encompasses a hospital, shopping centre and tons of schools, all typical breeding ground for good stories. Annoyingly, the office is in Hamilton which is miles away. Such office closures need to be carried out in the face of tough times for the print media but it is a shame to lose the local paper face to face feel. However, the East Kilbride news have tried to salvage this by offering editorial surgeries every Thursday lunchtime in the library.

It's an indication of the demise of local newspapers in the UK that the East Kilbride News was…read moreforced to close up shop in the town it covers. Instead, it is now based solely in Hamilton in a move which will surely dilute reporters' abilities to have fingers on the local pulse. It's a great shame for a paper like the EK News which actually retained good links with the community.Indeed face to face contact has now diminished to one weekly editorial surgery. Nevertheless the paper continues to battle valiantly on and offers good exposure to local organisations. Serving one of the biggest towns in the UK, this is a generally better-than-average local paper with plenty of scope for a wide range of news. The initial signs have been reasonable, but only time will tell if the lack of a local presence will take its toll on circulation figures long time. Hopefully not.

This place has been here for years and I've still to see anyone -apart from the owner - actually…read morecoming in and out of it. However, in the name of yelping and helping to promote local, independent businesses I ventured into the unknown world of Signs and Graphics. My apparent mission task was to enquire about Sign design, prices and time constraints for my boss a small, local (ish) business owner. This was fairly easy to chat about as I just delved into my past slightly when this was something which I may have indeed been in charge of. Seemingly, I successfully pulled it off and ended up having a good quarter of an hour chat with the very friendly and pleasant owner. He really did take the time to chat about specifics and provide suggestions about what might work best. He was also very honest about costs, time requirements and the difficulty involved in various techniques. Especially, considering it was very apparent that I knew nothing about signs, graphics or that much about marketing a business. So much so, that I felt rather guilty about being on a fake mission. Hopefully, his time spent on my won't have been wasted. Hopefully, some business owners will come across this and decide to pop in and see what's on offer. Come on guys...