Contributor Leaderboard

People don't HAVE to know why they voted: they still have a right to vote. An orangutan could stand for election in our local areas and as long as it was standing for Labour it would win and we would accept the democratic result People are only called politically illiterate when when it does not suit the wishes and whims of the wealthy elite. I suggest that there are many more who don't know why they voted to remain but are too arrogant to find out why! Oh the wails and cries of the out of touch Londoners and the Oxford hooray Henry's and luvies panicking when they realised the rest of the U.K could think for themselves .

Whey,aav just aboot seen ivrythin noo!! A divvent waatch telly,like other people,cos aam busy mornin ti neet,till a cum on heor after midneet usually!! Me Wife "taped" [!] a programme aboot the closure of Kellingly Colliery,the last deep mine ti close,so thi neet a sat and waatched it from 11-0pm -12-0 midneet. A wanted ti switch it off after five minutes into the programme,for a few reasons. A] A rubbish production wi so little content aboot actual mining,i.e.seeing the owamen and shift managers in their offices bantering on,[ "acting"], on camera. B] Absoloute proof of a North/South divide in the mining industry...i.e regard to investment. C] Seething at the thought of the atrocious conditions me and my Marra's worked in,and were blatantly ROBBED of what we had honestly earned,due to a Deputy Manager at Bates Pit scratching out "delays out of our control" as recorded in our Deputy's reports [ Productivity bonus scheme....wat a laugh..]. Kellingly pit had 6-feet [maybe more],high,coal faces,where thi miners didn't need ti wear knee-pads cos they walked up and doon the face! Fluorescent lighting aal thi way doon thi face,water fed dust suppression that worked,on the shearers, massive "Chock-shield" [Reg.T.M.!] face supports,where the whole of the extracted area was totally enclosed in an armour-plated cocoon,so nil chance of anyone being remotely hit by a roof fall of stone,not even a walnut-sized piece wud come doon between these chocks!![and a wudn't any ti either for thi lads' sakes!] Nae waata ti be seen except in the lad's waata bottles,mind,they needed it cos the one thing we didn't hev up here was equatorial temperatures doon theor! Doon the 3/4 Seam at Bates,it was the opposite,the north sea teeming in,frozzen caad,sowked ti thi skin,wat shud have been a 42-inch high seam,was owa 15 feet high on some faces,and that wasn't a pleasant height through choice,it was cos the bliddy roof had so much pressure it used ti flatten the flimsy face chocks ti thi floor and cause roof falls up ti 70 yards lang,and more,reet doon the coal face,absoloutely treacherous. We had ti stand on TOP of the face chocks,[which were supposed to be protecting us!]and build "butts" on top of the chock canopies,till we couldn't reach any higher,so had ti build another platform to stand on,so we cud continue building the butts up thi roof![a "butt" consisted of two 2' x 6" x 6" hardwood beech chocks side by side,with another two on top at 90 degrees with respect,then two more,and two more...etc,tillyou reached the roof!] See my Bates pit pics on Flickr,there's a pic of a high wood butt,aal squashed with roof pressure. Aal thi time we were working like this,it was in completely bare exposed roof conditions,totally against Manager's support rules for the mine,and against Mines and Quarries act 1956.......but with NO alternative,if we wanted to preserve our own lives,we had to take the risks. These lads doon sooth,[mind the lads at the Plessey at Bates,and the lads at Ellington also],didn't knaa haaf of it.and half of the lads I worked with on those faces are long gone noo. Sadly,some died at a very young age,late 30's,early forties,don't suppose the Coal Board wud have an inquiry as to why they all had thing like Leukaemia and cancer-related diseases after working on a Prototype Shearer with a nuclear isotope device mounted on the top of the machine,which was supposed to be "Ultra-Safe!],others became victims ti roof falls and girders being knocked oot,etc.R.I.P aal thi lads that aren't here ti bear me oot. 2-0 am,so will have to close me rant!![till another day!]

I was looking at the picture of the Netherton's miners march and the person marked number 9 could be my Dad, David Robson aka Mixer?. I've shown him the pic and he can't remember for sure whether he was there that day but says, "it looks like my stance". My Dad's memory is fading with time but remember's Alan Stappard who lived across the back lane on Third Street. He described the accident in detail where Alan was working on machinery which was used to cut into the coal face and switched on prematurely before he had finished and was killed. In the picture I've added two thumbnail pictures of my Dad to compare and it could be him, I will ask him again soon to see whether if he remembers anything more.

I'm pleased the video has brought back so many fond memories, feel free to download and share with everyone who wants to watch

Hi. The photograph was of the first football team at Barrington school. When we played away games, mostly at Ashington, we had to walk to Choppington Station to catch the bus. Another story from Barrington is that when my father took me and my brother to see Newcastle play we caught the bus at Choppington Stn as usual, went upstairs for a good seat and guess who was sitting there - Jackie Milburn on his way to play in front of 80,000. He had been working in the mines on the Saturday morning; needless to say I got his autograph,that day Charlie Wayman scored a hat-trick and Len Shackleton scored the other.

Hi Alan, John Lowe on Line brother of Raffie. This was the first Barrington school football team with the school providing new Yellow football strips. Jimmy Bailey, Will Foster and Spratty ended up at Bedlington Grammer School playing along side Bobby Charlton .Will became a teacher and Jimmy Bailey a linesman at the Bomarsund pit along side Rex Parker Happy days hope this fills in a few missing gaps.

That hit a nerve, didn't it!

Yes, we all know what 'get out of my face' means Monsta, but you need to Google the words 'there' and 'their' with particular regard to the huge difference between them. However, don't despair, and keep trolling..... this is fun! Edited to add: fun to some.

Yeah. Whatever .............

For my sins, I wasn't there either, however I did take the time to add my name to the petition. Two thousand and odd signatures must surely have been around 10% or more of the Bedlington population. Maybe if they'd had more time, the organisers could have built up a force to be reckoned with. They did a wonderful job though and deserved more respect from Lidl and the powers that be.

Here's a suggestion... Maybe they could bury the County Councillors in the hole before they lay the car park.