Burton Joyce & District u3a

05/09/2026

Burton Joyce & District u3a hold a speaker meeting on the second Tuesday of every month in Burton Joyce & Bulcote Village Hall. Our speaker on TUESDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER is DAVE ANDREWS, whose subject is "100 YEARS OF AUNTIE"
Dave Andrews worked at BBC Radio Leicester from 1996, where he presented most of the daily and weekend programmes. He was the commentator for BBC Radio Leicester during the services for the re-interment of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral and delivered a very interesting talk to us in April 2025 about the life of King Richard III.
This month’s talk tells the story of the BBC’s 100 years from the early days under Lord Reith through to the present. It covers the great days of radio and TV and some of the incredible changes in broadcasting over those 100 years and also features nostalgic audio and video clips from programmes and events of the past such as the first Christmas broadcast from King George V, Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and the opening of Radio1.
Visitor are very welcome and can attend two meetings without any cost or obligation. Visit our website at https://bju3a.co.uk for more information.

20/08/2026

Joining Burton Joyce & District u3a is vey easy using our online Membership Application Form. It takes a couple of minutes to complete and after one click on the “Submit Membership Application” button, it will be with the Membership Secretary in seconds. The application form can be accessed by clicking on this link:- https://bju3a.co.uk/membership

And it’s not only easier to join, it will soon be even cheaper. The fee from 1st September to 30th November (3 months) is now just £4 for an individual, and £7.25 for a couple at the same address.

02/08/2026

BJu3a's ukulele group performing at the Burton Joyce WI's Summer Fayre yesterday, a fundraising event for The Core Centre in Calverton.

17/07/2026

60s/70s/80s DISCO!! - FRIDAY 2ND OCTOBER.
u3a members only. Bring your own drinks and nibbles. Email [email protected] to express interest in coming.......and contribute to the playlist by telling us which songs you'd like to hear!

10/07/2026

Burton Joyce & District u3a hold a speaker meeting on the second Tuesday of every month in Burton Joyce & Bulcote Village Hall. Our speaker on TUESDAY 14TH JULY 2026 is STEPHEN BOOTH, whose subject is "THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MURDER"

Stephen is a locally-based award-winning crime writer whose 15 novels, set in the atmospheric and beautiful Peak District, are based on the detective pairing of two young police detectives from Derbyshire named DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper. A TV series, “Cooper and Fry”, based on the books, was screened on Channel 5 in November 2025.

During his early career, Stephen had been a teacher; he then entered journalism as a reporter covering rugby. Later assignments were wide ranging, from reporting on village Women's Institute meetings to coverage of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. He has said that working on the serial murder case had a direct influence on his leap to fiction writing. He began to look at the subject in a new light when his wife pointed out that even he could be a suspect in the case, and that she could not provide him with an alibi during the hours he worked the night shift!

Visitor are welcome and can attend two meetings without any cost or obligation. Visit our website at https://bju3a.co.uk for more information.

03/05/2026

Burton Joyce & District u3a hold a speaker meeting on the first Tuesday of every month in Burton Joyce & Bulcote Village Hall. Our speaker on TUESDAY 12TH MAY 2026 is TIM O’BRIEN, whose subject is “THE LAST POST AT RAF NEWTON”

Newton was one of numerous airfields built during the late 1930s as part of the UK government RAF expansion programme. It was completed in 1938 and at its peak Newton was able to accommodate 1773 males and 304 females. The airfield was a popular posting for those stationed there because of its close proximity to the city of Nottingham. In June 1940 Newton was under the control of No.1 Group Bomber Command and 103 Squadron and 150 Sqn were posted in after their return from France in July. Both squadrons were flying Fairey Battles at the time and they were held mainly in reserve for the expected invasion. They undertook numerous training tasks to prepare for this eventuality but also made a small number of night bombing raids to targets on the continent.

In October 1940 both squadrons were re-equipped with Vickers Wellington bombers. After a period of training on the new type 103 and 150 Sqns were heavily involved in bombing operations against targets, mostly in Germany and France.

Tim details the history of the base from it’s founding through the WW2 period, the post war developments and the squadrons that would call this base home. There are also accounts of the wartime missions and activity right up to it’s closure.

Visitor are welcome and can attend two meetings without any cost or obligation. Visit our website at https://bju3a.co.uk for more information.

16/04/2026

A really interesting and entertaining talk on Tuesday 14th April about the charity Guide Dogs by Alan Barnes, who despite being completely blind delivered a 35-slide PowerPoint presentation flawlessly. His talk covered the origin, history, and development of the organisation, its breeding and training programmes, funding and costs.

Most interesting was Alan's personal "Sight Loss Journey". Having lost his sight due to a workplace incident, he was forced to leave full time employment and eventuality to accept his new circumstances and seek help. He was officially accepted onto the Guide Dogs waiting list and subsequently allocated his own guide dog, Windsor (who also attended the meeting but missed some of the talk when he fell asleep!). Alan rounded off the 45-minute talk with a couple of very funny jokes, before answering questions.

As a member of another u3a, Alan couldn't make any charge for his talk, but the audience generously donated a total of £277 to the Guide Dogs charity.

Following the presentation we enjoyed tea, coffee, and cake.

Interested in Burton Joyce & District u3a. Visit our website at www.bju3a.co.uk for more information.

26/02/2026

Our "Time Out" group arranges visits, trips, and social events for members. Here's what's coming up:-

Tuesday 17th March - A visit to the National Justice Museum followed by an optional lunch at Pizzamisu, High Pavement, Nottingham.

Saturday April 11th- The Travelling Willoughbys at Mapperley Social Club. This is a (Travelling Wilburys) tribute band. The Travelling Wilburys originally included Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty.

Friday April 24th - A 19-seat minibus trip to Lichfield. Friday is Market Day, the Medieval Cathedral is well worth a visit, as is the Samuel Johnson Museum and the Erasmus Darwin House.

Tuesday 19th May - A 19-seat minibus trip to Trentham Gardens near Stoke on Trent. The 725 acres site offers award winning gardens with a lake, ancient woodlands and wild flower meadows. It was originally designed by Capability Brown in the 19th century.

Volunteer social & activities groups in Burton Joyce Nottingham for retired or semi retired people providing education & entertainment events

20/02/2026

A WhatsApp Scam Alert from the consumer organisation Which?

WhatsApp Gold scam and Martinelli
The WhatsApp Gold and Martinelli scam is a common hoax which regularly recirculates. The scam installs malware on your phone.

It begins with a WhatsApp message promoting a sham version of the messaging service called 'WhatsApp Gold,' which has special features that can be unlocked by clicking a link. This link will lead to malware being downloaded to your device.

Another version of this scam features a message which warns of a video called 'Martinelli' installing malware to your device if opened. However, there is no evidence that this video exists.

You can report a WhatsApp message by selecting it in your conversation and tapping ‘report’. To report the sender on WhatsApp, open up the chat, tap on the sender's contact details and select 'block and report'.

08/02/2026

Burton Joyce & District u3a's Monthly speaker meetings are held on the second Tuesday of the month in Burton Joyce & Bulcote Village Hall, Trent Lane, Burton Joyce, at 1:30pm. The speaker at our meeting this Tuesday (10th February) is John Todd, whose talk is entitled "Our NHS Today." Visitors are very welcome and may attend two meetings without any obligation to join.

The NHS has always been under pressure to meet the demand and needs of patients but over the past 15 years waiting times, and other major issues have increased. This talk explores the reasons, including; population growth, patient expectations, clinical developments and pressures on services in the community, including GP practices. These pressures have been apparent and known for many years, but correcting them is difficult to put into practice. John explains the issues, his big concerns, looks at actions being considered to bring about improvements, and shows how we stand with other comparable countries in terms of facilities and survival from cancer.

John studied Physics at university and went on to study applications of physics in medicine, which covers radiation safety, nuclear medicine, calibration of equipment, IT, electronics and imaging. He was appointed head of department at Nottingham City Hospital in 1978 and by the late 1980s had taken on wider management responsibilities including large IT projects. In 1991 he was appointed a Director at Leicester Royal Infirmary, responsible for information, medical records and hitting all the targets aimed at reducing waiting times for patients, and for one year he managed the Glenfield Hospital. He also served on the NHS/BMA committee developing rules for accessing data held in NHS. When he was
trained at BBC Nottingham to cope with the media, he was told he had the face, voice and demeanour to deal well with bad news!