News in Maldon

A record number of Essex Police officers and staff will be rewarded in the Queen's New Year's Honours List for 2021.

One member of staff and five police officers will have the honours bestowed upon them, with stories varying from hostage negotiation, to supporting potential police officers of tomorrow, and three unique stories from the biggest investigation Essex Police has ever undertaken.

Not everyone thinks that a new decade starts with a year ending ten, twenty etc. It's often argued that a year ending with a zero is actually the final year of a decade, which means that 2021 would be the first year of the Twenties.

Either way, it would be nice to think that the new year is a proper fresh start. Sadly, in many respects the first few months look likely to give us more of what we've got far too used to already. As winter turns into spring, then we can hopefully look forward to recovering something of the life we lost.

IT'S been another seven days of big news stories in Maldon, from reaction to the initial shock of the district being placed under Tier 4 restrictions through to the fundraising antics of Maldon's own Grinch as he raised the community's spirits.

Here at Nub News we like to make your life easier so if you've missed any of the local news this week, don't worry.

Maldon Nub News would like to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas.

We started bringing you the news back at the start of August and it's been five months where – as for most of 2020 – events have taken some unexpected and unprecedented turns. One of those came little under a week ago with news that Maldon district was to enter Tier 4 and that so many festive plans would have to be cancelled.

The new Chairman of Maldon District Council, Independent Councillor Mark Heard, is writing regular column pieces to keep in touch with residents. Here we have his Christmas message.

"Consider this. Dementia affects one in three of us either directly or indirectly, so I hope you will read on!

In the days leading up to and including the Christmas and New Year holidays, Maldon Nub News will bring you messages from some key local figures. Some of these will be from politicians and so the views expressed are entirely their own.

Some will be long and others brief, but the thing they will have in common is their message to the people of Maldon as this most difficult of years draws to a close.

The seven-day Covid-19 infection rate for Maldon district has risen above 500 per 100,000 for the first time.

In the week up to Friday, 18 December, a total of 338 new cases were recorded in the Maldon district, equal to 520.6 per 100,000 population.

Maldon District Council has published a schedule of revised waste bin collection days for some dates over the Christmas and New Year holiday period.

These are as follows:

Maldon Nub News has been running UP CLOSE in Maldon features with businesses and organisations in the town and district over the past weeks and will continue to do so as we head into the New Year.

However, this week we have cleared the stage for a special guest, who with the help of the Rotary Clubs of Maldon and Heybridge Blackwater has been riding on his sleigh through our streets.

We enter Christmas in the midst of a national emergency that has brought great sacrifice and loss. But 106 years ago, the nation was beginning its first Christmas in a devastating war that took countless lives and was followed five years later by a global pandemic that cruelly targeted young people, in many cases the very people who had survived four years of fighting.

The Roll of Honour for Maldon lists 248 young men who died in the Great War. They represent all three services, and regiments up and down the country, but understandably there are many who served in our county regiment, the Essex Regiment, now represented by C (Essex) Company, the Royal Anglian Regiment.