February and March, Bedlington West.

[Malcolm Robinson]

Just a quick round up of what's been going on in my Ward over the last month or so........

Didn't want to leave these important projects unfinished!  

[Canny lass]

I'd like to make a slight change to that last sentence - 'Some of us ARE making things happen' would be more accurate.

OK, some of these things are not moving mountains but even the little things - like easy access to a shovel full of grit, can make a real big difference. It's great that somebody realizes that and gets to grips with the problem. Keep up the good work Malcolm.

PS I'm loving these video reports. More like this please!

[Malcolm Robinson]

14 hours ago, Canny lass said:

 

PS I'm loving these video reports. More like this please!

Thanks Canny lass.

The reason for the videos is that I’m usually accused of being too verbose and you can imagine the reams I would have to write to get all that lot down.   

One of the accusations levelled at me is that I don’t tell people what’s going on????

Course that probably comes from the politicos who struggle to leap from one paragraph to another and who for decades have never engaged with their communities and it suits their narrative to foster the idea that nothing goes on because Independent councillors can’t get anything done. 

Well I’m thinking that lot is certainly north of £500K and in all probability something approaching £1M because while I know a lot of the costs I don’t know the costs of the likes of the road improvements and considering most things council wise cost about 2-3 times the usual rate I have no doubt the latter figure is not unrealistic! 

And BTW, that doesn’t include the £500K I managed to get in last year’s NCC budget for a sports facility at West Lea!  A facility I worked on for 2 years had meetings with planners, green space officers, funders, user groups and fabricators.  I had all the boxes ticked and even a set of drawings, I then had to hand it all over to NCC who basically pulled it! 

I just don’t understand why our Town is starved of investment while others, some less populated, get new and refurbished facilities costing tens of millions of pounds? 

I won the arguments, got the funding yet still we haven’t seen anything built?  And it wasn’t the Administration who pulled it, they actually supported it! 

Another in a long line of sorry tales and something that has to BE changed! 

[Canny lass]

4 hours ago, Malcolm Robinson said:

One of the accusations levelled at me is that I don’t tell people what’s going on????

Well, I for one, can't agree with that. I get a greater quantity of intelligible information from your reports than I get from some other sources - the operative word here being 'intelligible'. A (comparitively) short, plain, no nonsense, down-to-earth text that simply tells it like it is, gets more points from me than a long-winded, multi-page report full of tables, figures, and terminology - and I say that as a woman with a master's degree in English.

[_pauls]

Thanks for the update Malcolm - some good stuff in there. I noticed the new grit bin on Dunstanburgh the other day, and just this morning I was walking through West Lea Cemetary with my daughter for what seems like the millionth time since lockdown, and she asked me what the building was. Now I can give her a real answer!

 

[Malcolm Robinson]

15 minutes ago, _pauls said:

Thanks for the update Malcolm - some good stuff in there. I noticed the new grit bin on Dunstanburgh the other day, and just this morning I was walking through West Lea Cemetary with my daughter for what seems like the millionth time since lockdown, and she asked me what the building was. Now I can give her a real answer!

 

It was the old hut used to store tools etc for the cemetery staff.  The Friends group needed a base and that seemed ideal.  I have another possible use for it too..........a man shed to help with mental health issues.  If we can get some people interested in using it as a meeting place then doing a bit of gardening in the cemetery it would help in many ways! 

The Yurt in Leading Link can be used in the same way.