Robert Lloyd - a Sir Gar Blog of random news . . . and some Clecs!

Carmarthen town centre businesses are being urged to sign-up to a Student Lock-In – an innovative nationwide retail event targeted specifically at the student market. Carmarthenshire County Council’s economic development team is working with the University of Wales Trinity St David (UWTSD) to bring the event to Carmarthen for the first time. The Student Lock-In has become a highly popular event, with students often attending multiple events across regions to get their hands on the best bargains. Carmarthen town centre businesses are being encouraged to offer exclusive discounts, giveaways and competitions to attract students to spend in town between 6pm and 9pm on Tuesday, September 27. All retail businesses can get involved, including outlets offering food and drink. The Lock-In will be promoted locally to students from UWTSD’s Carmarthen and Lampeter campuses, Coleg Sir Gâr campuses, and sixth form students from Carmarthen schools, with the potential for students to visit from othe...

Menna Elfyn will be launching her new bilingual Welsh-English collection Murmur with a number of events this autumn. As well as several launches in Wales, she will also be giving two readings in London. The book is published by Bloodaxe on 27 September. Murmur includes a sequence of poems about the last princess of Wales, Catrin Glyndwr, daughter of Owain Glyndwr, who was incarcerated with her children in the Tower of London for over two years until their mysterious death. Fittingly enough, mur-mur in Welsh also means wall-wall, so the book’s leitmotif is one that stresses the distance between words and worlds. Murmur is a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.  “Her voice is gentle, even tender, but she is far from confining herself to the valleys and mines of her grandparents’ landscape… her points of reference lie far outside the Welsh tradition – to Emily Dickinson and Kurt Vonnegut… and her own travels extend to Cairo and Bucharest.”   - PB...

Carmarthen chartered accountant and business consultants are sponsoring a key seminar for the West Wales Law Society tomorrow (Thursday). The seminar has the topic - 'New Anti-Money Laundering Compliance 2012 - How to profit and protect in your firm'. The seminar is taking place at The Halliwell Centre, the University of Wales Trinity St David in Carmarthen. David Butler and Nigel Roberts, from Clay Shaw Butler, will make the opening remarks. The guest speaker will be Tania Tribius of Tower Training. Tania Tribius LLB AKC FRSA has 20 years experience as a Solicitor and London Partner. Her specialist expertise is Anti-Money Laundering, Risk Management, general Compliance for Solicitors and Legal Practice Management. Managing director of legal specialists, Tower Legal, Tania provides in-house consultancy, face-to-face training and precedent materials to MLROs, COLPs, COFAs, Managing Partners and all staff. Tower Legal ( www.towerlegal.co.uk ) works with over 2,000 law firms ...

The new University of Wales Trinity St David will have a major academic coup to its name virtually from Day One. For it has been chosen to host a major international conference by the Foundation of Endangered Languages. The new university, which takes shape in the autumn as a marriage of Trinity University and Lampeter, will welcome up to 100 academics from all over the world to its Carmarthen campus. “It really is something of a coup for the university. It is a major annual international conference and we are looking forward to being the host university,” said Dr Hywel Lewis, who is the MA Bilingual Studies Programme Coordinator at the university. “The conference will be held here from September 13-15 and has a very topical theme - Reversing Language Shift: How to Re-awaken a Language Tradition. “The conference was originally due to be held in Ecuador, but when they requested a postponement we were able to step into the breach and offer our facilities here at Carmarthen.” Dr Lewis att...