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Been off here a while now and just decided to have a look again. Good God it's as if I'd never been away, same old, same old! Look, the world does not owe Bedlington a favour! Bedlington as it stands is in no mans land, the Cooncil aren't bothered, the local MP only shows his arrogant two faces when it suites him, useless git! Even the majority of Bedlington people can't be bothered to get off their behinds to do anything to help Bedlington. The rents on the Front Street are exorbitant to the extreme. Local people are to blame for this! Well one not so local as he is with his boyfriend on the Isle of Man. Anyway we moved from a small shop on the Front Street to a one four times the size further up the street for a third of the rent of the small one. The larger premises are owned by someone in London. Tesco also blame the Cooncil for the barriers that were put up to everything Tesco wanted to do! The monstrosity that is the Market place doesn't help either, steps and ill laid Yorkshire stone, slip slide away. While I'm on about monstrosities what the hell is going on over the road? Hadrians wall was built in less time than that eyesore! Anyway I've strayed but so what While I'm on the Tesco site is quite large, yes? Ideal site for a leisure centre! Cooncil said money was there but nowhere to build one in Bedlington. Let's see what excuses they come up with now! Wow after that I need a rest! Good to be back haha

Maggie, "The number of people who live in our town and the number who drive through must be huge." While I appreciate your impassioned plea to Waitrose, and I'm one of those advocating optimism, the above quoted sentence highlights the problem. Officially, Bedlington has a population of around 15,000. That's not particularly great. Also, it's a town that is, geographically, 'stuck in the middle'. There is, in truth, very little through traffic; the Spine Road and A1 see to that. The only people who would shop at a Waitrose in Bedlington would be those who either live or work here. Otherwise, where would they come from? All the surrounding towns - Cramlington, Blyth, Ashington, Morpeth - have more than adequate shopping facilities. Why would they choose to come here instead? One of the areas in which I agree with those who propose a doom-laden future for the town is that I personally cannot see any store of this type bringing people here to shop. Quite simply, out-of-towners don't need to. The question is, what do we want? What would we use? I doubt, sadly, that Waitrose see the site as having anything but minor potential. I don't claim to know what the answer is, but I don't think it's another supermarket giant who would quickly see that the footfall just isn't there.