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Sorry, I'm very late with the answers! I've not been allowed to look at a screen since Friday. However, I did get a pair of temporary specs. They are far from the most elegant pair of specs I've ever had but at least I can read now and I'm actually writing this myself so not reliant on family and friends anymore! Answers to the New Year quiz: 1. 31 Dec 1923 2. The Gambia 3. Potomac River 4. David Nixon 5. Potato 6. Chan 7. Edward II 8. left 9. Seraphim 10. Fiat 11. Carrot 12. Mary, Queen of Scots 13. Sooty 14. Sandhurst 15. Four 16. Montague 17. Norway 18. Helium 19. Templars 20. Ounce

The sorry saga of the Hartford Hall gates. These Grade 11* listed gates were made by the world leading makers Coalbrookdale for the Vienna Exhibition in 1873 to demonstrate their craftsmanship. Anecdotally I was told you can even see the fingerprints on the cast hands included in the design of these gates, a feat which cannot be reproduced even today! It was agreed as part of the renovations to Hartford Hall that these gates would be renovated and English Heritage became involved. They even gave a grant towards the renovations and insisted there was only one place in England that could be trusted with this significant renovation project. The gates were dismantled and shipped off to the specialist down in Yorkshire. Things now take a turn for the worse! During the renovation project the developer went bust and the Administrator was called in. The Administrator sequestered all monies in the account including the grant funding for these gates and paid out debtors of the company. So the money disappeared and the gates which had been started were now left languishing somewhere in Yorkshire. There were many calls for their reinstatement and I decided to do a bit of digging myself. I found out where they had been shipped off to and rang the company up to find out what was going on. I was told there was an outstanding bill for work done, about 1/3rd, and until that was paid the gates remained, never mind about getting them finished. After making more ‘noises’ about them over the next few years and a BBC Inside Blog about them I found out they had been moved and were actually in the old fire station at Morpeth. So I presumed that part bill had been paid and moves were afoot to get them sorted? Asking about them now and I was told they had been moved again, where I wasn’t allowed to know, but moves were afoot to get something done with them. I persisted and eventually I received a phone call to tell me they were in the possession of NCC (good) they would be renovated (great) they would probably be encased in glass or plastic to stop any further degeneration (great) and would be on public display (great!). There was even a cost estimate of around £500K and I was asked to help find that money. I agreed but then asked where exactly would they be displayed, even suggesting several places in Bedlington where I thought they might work. I was told they had to be displayed in…….Ashington? Ehhh! Why was never explained and after a lengthy heated argument I said I wouldn’t be helping them to see them end up in Ashington, which I felt would be yet another slap in the face for Bedlington! So that’s the tale of woe yet again but as far as I know NCC have them stashed somewhere and that £500K estimate could well be in excess of £750K now, never mind where they might end up! (As an addendum to this one.........The Gates are now in safe storage in a NCC depot where they are being kept as dry and moisture proof as possible. )

One enduring question, and I’ve asked it many many times myself, why has the needs of Bedlington been ignored for so long? First under Wansbeck District Council and then latterly under Northumberland County Council. I don’t know the answer and I’ve never had that question answered, but we can delve a little under various blankets. Back in the day we had Bedlingtonshire Urban District Council. A council many look back on fondly for one reason or another but principally because we were in charge of our own affairs. We then had the Local government Act 1972 and in 1974 Ashington, Bedlington and Newbiggin became Wansbeck District Council. I was told that BUDC was given a choice to go that way or form one with Cramlington, an emerging newish Town at the time with huge commercial infrastructure. I know which way I would have gone! So again by word of mouth by people there at the time, one of the first decisions made by WDC was to make Ashington the ceremonial and commercial head of this new entity. By that very act I would argue it relegated Bedlington into at best second place if not third place in the pecking order of WDC! As far as I could see that continued throughout the life of WDC, the council that was once described as “making decisions in smoke filled rooms behind closed doors!” We then again had the structural changes to local government in 2009 which saw the creation of Northumberland County Council as a Unitary Authority and I’ve already written a piece about that. As I said at the time, playing third fiddle under Wansbeck District Council would seem a pipe dream now as so many other towns and villages were added to the list to compete with. I now have to delve into the heady world of politics in search of the answer. We saw WDC 100% controlled by a single political party. As I have already written about some of the decisions they made were unbelievable to me! I think out of 42 councillors there 19 were from Bedlingtonshire. I even said to one or two if you get your act together you could force WDC to invest this side of the Stakeford Bridge, you have nearly 50% of the votes so it wouldn’t take much to push something through. I was laughed at and told it didn’t work like that. Took some time to find out how it did work and as far as I could see it was about furthering the interests of a political party not the people who they were supposed to be working for. That is the same across all political parties BTW and anyone can see it time and time again when their ethereal Whips impose control on voting. The voting patterns in Bedlington were taken for granted and so why give yourself work when the elections were a forgone conclusion. Ramping that up to a county level and we saw the same and I see it at just about every full council meeting to this day. That’s a cycle we have to break and we made a good start by electing some independent councillors which believe me sent ripples throughout the political establishment! Just to demonstrate, and it’s plain to see, at most if not all major NCC meetings it’s the independent councillors asking the really ‘difficult’ questions. As far as I can see the only way to get decisions based on merit instead of political expediency is to elect more independent councillors, at least we can vote with our conscience instead of being told how to vote on certain issues! I now want to look at budgets and how they work. The council has, by law, to pass an annual balanced budget so if we see schemes included, like for the sake of argument the Bedlington Regeneration funding, which fail to get started in a year that funding is basically lost. There are options to keep it but essentially 99% of funding which falls into this category is lost. So we saw funding allocated to Bedlington of between £6-£12M over about 3 budgets. Each time failure to realise that project meant the funding was lost, that’s why it had to be reinserted into the next year’s budget. Covid finally stopped any major funding for Bedlington being included and by major I mean 10’s of millions. Bearing in mind that something approaching 90% of the NCC budget goes into the social side of things like adult and young people’s services, and with a large county like ours where towns up and down are equally screaming for investment it’s not hard to see pressures building up. It is easy to see why external funding for various projects is so necessary for NCC, like Levelling up funding, High Street funding, Borderlands etc. Whilst I understand the constraints I still cannot excuse the fact that Bedlington is only included in the smallest pot! That’s seems to me to be a mixture of political pressure and easy options. There are a few of my thoughts, if anyone can give me a definitive answer please do!

I’ve been asked about the Bedlingtonshire Development Trust and how it came about……so here goes. (Sorry this is going to be a long one…….) As a member of the public I had started to take an interest in local politics, even just to see why the needs of Bedlington had been ignored for so many years, and had been told to look at forming a Development Trust if I wanted to be proactive. I went around each of the 3 local councils in Bedlingtonshire asking if they would be supportive, thinking a partnership approach would be the best way to go. Each said NO, not interested! That didn’t put me off. I was doing the research when NCC closed our community centre in, as they claimed, a cost cutting exercise. I knew a vehicle like a Development Trust could apply through the council’s asset transfer policy to take it over as other trusts had done with many other redundant buildings up and down the county. I was given the criteria for such a bid and went about putting a Trust board together. The main crux of what we needed to do was to submit a fully costed business plan so that’s what I did. The Trust was the only group who held an inspection of the building to ascertain the cost of repairs it needed. There had been no money spent of maintenance for years under Wansbeck District Council and even less under NCC, and when I saw the books they were even worse! I used this to negotiate a sum of money that would come with the building to see to its much needed repairs. Even the main electrical conduit into the building needed to be replaced, that should give some indication just how badly neglected it was. After quite some weeks of intense collaborative work I eventually produced a professional 21 page business plan which was submitted on the day all these bids had to be in. There were 3 interested parties and I had meetings with them asking if we could do this as a partnership. One said no way, that was the Lib Dem controlled Town Council, and the other said yes because they just wanted a very limited use which I was happy to agree. The bids were in and judged by the Lib Dem NCC Administration at County Hall. The Lib Dem controlled Town Council were awarded the community centre. Fair enough but as some of the details came out I was stunned! They had settled on considerably less than what I had negotiated for, regarding repairs to the building and hadn’t even submitted a business plan? It seems the Lib Dem Administration at County Hall, where the chair of our Town Council was secretary and so included in this meeting, had somehow judged the bids even though there had only been one joint one and awarded the centre to a group that hadn’t even taken part in the process? I was then summoned to a meeting with the Mayor and his deputy. I asked a colleague to come along as a witness because by now I was weary to say the least! The Mayor told me to hand over the business plan I had done because he had been told it was excellent. I couldn’t believe my ears I could only look at my colleague as he looked at me aghast. I quickly realised these people just didn’t have a clue; they had done no prep work, no research and had no costings for things like new heating systems etc. We walked away shaking our heads after replying, “No, you roll your plans out now!” So we had a fully functioning Trust with nothing to do might as well put it to work! As I’ve already reported we worked with an NCC officer to get the sports pavilion down at Gallagher Park. Next up was some self-promotion and this one was entered into an award by a large European Bank and made the last 10 before I had to cut it for exceptional reasons! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqecpk6LpFk We were also working on a sports hall at Meadowdale School area with Bedlington Forum. We even got the feasibility money for it off a part of NCC, but just as we were about to pull the trigger and commission a national group to come in and pull it together we were told NCC would double to money but it had to include the whole of Bedlington, not just the Top End. We agreed and that was commissioned, little did we know what effect the proposed new school at Bedlington Station would have. A full professional report was produced after interviewing local sports groups, potential sports groups, councillors, NCC etc. and the conclusion……..”Whilst new sporting provision is needed in Bedlington we can’t ignore a £20M new school at Bedlington Station which will have a full range of up to date sporting provision. The best outcome would be to make sure these facilities are available for the community to use”. Course that £20M actually turned into nearly £10M and one of the first things to get the chop…….the big new multi-use sports centre and pitches! A much reduced offer was eventually built which spectacularly failed to meet any of our expectations. The Trust worked closely with Leading Link and again the first thing was sporting facilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8qunOuVvCQ We also successfully applied for a Heritage grant to demonstrate our rich history. The project attracted a lot of praise off the Heritage people and we had to go down to Manchester and were applauded as one of the best projects of this kind in the country. We built an interactive trailer which was then ‘decorated’ with images of Bedlington history as well as thigs to do and Leading Link took it around the local schools explaining what each bit was about. We held a ‘junior’ Bedlington Picnic Day as well as producing some excellent videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz6A9NLArEI What Bedlington’s about and where might it go………(We can dream!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtUAN4UKRhU Bedlington’s mining heritage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EZf2LS_vlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6i461yrGFA The Development Trust was asked to intervene time and time again in various issues. The Olympic Torch was coming to the county as part of the London 2012 Olympic games and guess where wasn’t listed as one of the Towns for it to go through, as per! Some pretty heated exchanges followed! I was eventually allowed to make a presentation, at Blyth, to the UK Sports Association guys overseeing this and set to work with Lyn Horton from Leading Link and Richard Wearmouth from the Salvation Army putting together the necessary event/safety plans etc. These national agency guys couldn’t have been more supportive and even squashed some of the stuff our local council raised! The day wasn’t the best as far as the weather went but over 5000 people lined our Front Street to watch the Torch pass through our Town! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9ZP8jOcy4 I was then asked to help with a little project for some of our disabled seniors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S46ShD4M2wM The Trust also put on some entertainment for our seniors in the Salvation Army as well as getting the funding to help Mind Active purchased a bit of expensive equipment they had been after for some time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka-fhVgjXTs The Trust was by now working closely with several local charitable groups in fact the only ones that wouldn’t work with us were the ones with some councillor members! Several more projects followed but then I decided to stand for council and as I could see a clear prejudicial interest I resigned my Trust board membership. I would like to thank past and serving officers of the Trust for the support they always give to our Town. I was especially grateful when they gave so much to our struggling foodbanks, way before any group thought about doing that. Here is a radio snippet where I try and explain what the Development Trust is about. https://bedlington.uk/.../malcolm-robinson.../ Funnily enough, just as a post script, East Bedlington Parish Council have formed their own Development Trust very recently. Seems the circle has come right around…………….