This Is Guernsey

Ormer House pupils raised £452 for children’s charities with their sponsored readathon. (0530868)

The children of Ormer House prep school raised an impressive £452 for charity in a sponsored reading marathon.
The ‘readathon’ is a national event that is held annually throughout the British Isles.
‘We are delighted to have taken part in the readathon,’ said head teacher Maggie Burridge. ‘It encourages our children to read and at the same time help other children in the area who are not as well off as themselves.’
The money raised by the Ormer schoolchildren goes in equal amounts to two children’s well-established charities, the Roald Dahl foundation and Clic Sargent, for young people with cancer.
The money is always spent locally on caring for young people suffering, from cancer, Hodgkin’s disease, leukaemia, blood disorders and acquired brain
injury.
To date, Ormer House has raised £4,000 through its annual reading marathons.
News that Blue Islands is reinstating direct flights between Jersey and Alderney has been welcomed.
Although perhaps not the most lucrative of air links, it is nonetheless hugely beneficial to islanders.
Alderney tourism benefits from the many loyal Jersey visitors such as the female golfers as well as day trippers who are visiting Jersey itself.
It is also the preferred shopping destination for Alderney’s shop-starved Wags and, in fact, anyone who needs something.

Getting between the islands and to France and the UK by sea and by air can be a haphazard affair but these transport links are absolutely vital for households and
businesses. Last year was a busy one for Alderney’s lifeboat crew.
Official RNLI statistics show that the island was 29 in the British Isles list of busiest stations.
There were a total of 14 launches, with the all-weather boat being called out 11 times and the inshore going out thrice.
A total of 26 people were rescued in 2007, four of them children.
Of the number rescued,
21 were picked up by the all-weather boat, the
Trent class Roy Barker I, the other five by the smaller inshore launch.
The larger lifeboat stations in St Peter Port and St Helier each launched 35 missions last year.
The UK lifeboat station with the most launches was Torbay. It sent boats out 131 times in the year, saving 137 people.

For such a small place, Alderney has incredibly professional emergency services.
Although the lifeboat is probably the most high-profile, this week’s minor incident on the Alderney runway proved how efficient the airport fire crew is.
The emergency occurred when part of the undercarriage of a private plane collapsed on landing.
The crew were quick
to clear the wreckage off the runway and fortunately no one was harmed.