threegee

Hi Mark!

I only ever got into the factory two or three times, and remember the IBM computer doing the wages, and the resistor banding machines on the metox precision resistor line. In fact, I probably still have some of the floor sweepings and production overruns gifted in a large paper bags by Dr Kirby (the head of research) as a thank you for very occasionally helping him with electrical and electronic bits and bobs he required urgently.  Latterly, I also knew John Storey, who worked in engineering there, and was an assistant flying instructor at Newcastle airport in his spare time.

The Magic Roundabout sounds like an interesting machine.  Keen to know more.

Err.. none of the above.  Very surprised that you didn't know that there was a Bedlington.uk mail server that's quite independent of the board software.  Longstanding supporters have only to ask. There's also a facility to have bedlington.uk mail redirects to your existing mailboxes. PM if you need more details.

Take heart that we are now on well on the way to restoring the traditional British values that have been thoroughly trashed by the current fascist government..

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a huge victory, not just for Reform but for democracy.

This Labour government have u-turned on their plan to cancel local elections for 4.6m voters.

Keir Starmer, in collusion with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats tried to cancel 30 elections across the country, some for the second year in a row.

Last month, Reform UK took the government to court, and we were due in the High Court this Thursday. But today, they have caved in, with the Secretary of State for Local Government, Steve Reed, withdrawing the decision to cancel elections.

This defeat is yet another nail in the coffin for Starmer's premiership, and for Steve Reed, a resigning matter.

Only Reform UK fights for democracy. And we will be ready to fight elections across the country on May 7th.

What's Facebuke?  Do you mean one of those things which invades your privacy, and spams you constantly, for no actual benefit? 🙃

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I have two email services. One with btinternet and one with gmail.

I'd have thought you'd have created yourself a bedlington.uk mailbox by now!

2 hours ago, Pegwoman said:

...I just strongly believe that Bedlington deserves its own  museum...

Should have been done decades ago!

It irritates me to see videos on the early railways which make zero mention of our unmatched contribution to the railways.  I think there was an effort to kill this solely because of the politics at the time.  Surely surely we can get over this in the twenty-first century?!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/us-uk-pact-will-boost-advances-in-drug-discovery-create-tens-of-thousands-of-jobs-and-transform-lives

"BlackRock is investing £500 million into enterprise data centres across the country, which includes an initial investment of over £100 million in a data centre expansion west of London. The broader programme will enhance UK digital infrastructure."

...

"James Seppala, Chairman of Blackstone Europe, said:

We are delighted that the government has designated our hyperscale data centre campus in Northumberland as an AI Growth Zone. This should help accelerate the development of one of Europe’s largest data centre facilities, with £10 billion of projected investment by Blackstone funds. We hope that the project will represent a transformational investment for the region, with the potential to deliver substantial benefits to the country and local communities, by driving innovation, creating high-skilled jobs, and solidifying the UK’s position as a global AI leader."

 

 

I refer the honourable members to the statement I made earlier.

On 13/09/2025 at 21:45, Vic Patterson said:

... is no friend of ours, he certainly can't be trusted...

He will do what all politicos do and try to capitalise on things which mostly would have happened anyway, because the money was right.

When you say he can't be trusted I think there are an awful lot of people who'd disagree with you. That's because he's one of the few leaders in modern times that has actually done what he claimed he was going to do. They'd say that a lot of the trading relationships with the US were fundamentally unbalanced. That very many countries had been parasitic on the US economy for a very long time, and that it was ordinary US workers who'd paid the price.

Brexit started to unwind some of the unbalanced trading relationship that the UK had, and that was a product of ordinary working people seeing some of the reality of what the political classes had been up to. Unfortunately we still allow ourselves to be guilt tripped by the Irish Republic, and prop up their economy, despite their repeated efforts to undermine ours.

I'm not sure what province you are in,  but I've been hearing rumblings that there's a fundamental split in Canada starting with Alberta then all points West. If I was living there I'd be seriously considering joining one of the separatist movements advocating a more harmonious relationship with the USA. Ditching (that UK economic reject) Carney's socialist globalism has to be the way forward for ordinary Canadians. What on earth were you lot thinking electing him of all people? He has FAIL written on his forehead!

Hi Vic!

I suspect we are going to hear something from your good friend "the evil orange man" quite soon. Maybe one of those Gordon Brown things of announcing the very same money multiple times, on the assumption that the average voter has a very short memory. 😀

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/blackrock-invest-700-million-uk-data-centres-during-trump-visit-sky-news-reports-2025-09-13/

I happened to own it (jointly) for quite a few years.  Was going to move in, but never did.  Good sound building: they don't build them like that any more! Goodness, I hope it's "still standing"!

10:35 to hear the truth about the so-called Online Protection Bill and who and what it really protects.

Colin Sutton's bit further on is masterful, and should be compulsory viewing for anyone in the police who wants to get on the right side of history.  This present nonsense has to and must end!

Linked from today's Telegraph.

P.S. Don't worry, I now live in a country where free speech is still possible!  😂

Thanks for that show of support HPW, but I was rater hoping to hear from someone who didn't agree with me. 

The figures for June now out are truly dreadful:  the highest June borrowing in history if you ignore the Tory lunacy of the spending during the pandemic.  In one single month, Labour added £20.7BN to our national debt.  That's almost double the increase in debt in May.

The terrible news though is that almost 80% of this money was simply squandered on interest payments (which themselves will attract even more interest).  How does that in any way “fix the foundations”?  As with many other issues, this government is gaslighting the electorate until the big reveal comes!  Four more years?  I think not!

Despite the political spin, it's perfectly obvious why Rachel Reeves was in tears during the HoC debate on welfare payment reductions.  The realisation had finally dawned that she has taken on the hopeless task of balancing the UK's books. Hopeless because even the easy low-hanging fruit can't be plucked.

We are supposed to believe that "the adults are now in charge", but like most of the guff from the Labour propaganda machine, exactly the reverse is true. Everything they've done to allegedly improve the economy has actually made our situation worse.

The international bond markets have taken notice, and a 1970s type Sterling crisis is looming. How long this will take is anyone's guess. Some economists say it will strike in 2026. But one thing is for sure: this hopeless government won't last out it's five year term, and it will ALL end in tears!

At my age, the world is increasingly full of mysteries.  Mind you, I DO in fact know what a woman is! 😅

I think he just posted on the wrong thread, Eggy!  Will try to move it to somewhere meaningful.  😊

Yes, the so-called Democratic Party is now packed out with crazies.  If they can't rig the vote, they will use any other means to prevail.  There are elements in the Labour Party that, if they ever get power, will never relinquish it.  They scream fascist at their opponents, but are in fact the real fascists.

Message Handling Protocol???

The BBC isn't a place for politics?  You must be joking!

On 01/11/2024 at 21:49, Alan Edgar (Eggy1948) said:

 

 

@threegee - reply from Cllr Alex Wallace = 

Thanks Eggy!  I reckon it's chicken and egg(y) here: they depend on keen users flagging up new installations, and if practically no one is using it yet then practically no one will report it.  ZapMap only covers the UK, so I've actually only referenced it once in the last five years.  BUT if you are in the UK (and don't have a Tesla) it's the primary goto.

On 13/12/2024 at 18:17, Symptoms said:

EVs are a brilliant idea ... until (as others here have said) you look at the vehicle charging infrastructure;  I'd buy an plugin EV if I could be sure of decent range and loads of FAST charging stations....

If you buy the right EV, there are no such problems.  We go anywhere in Europe without any worries as to charging.  The car knows where it's going to charge and when; it even predicts which chargers will be free when it arrives.  The normal spacing of 160Km for superchargers is now being filled-in to 80Km in many places.  In countless thousands of Km travelled, we've never had to wait to get charged anywhere.  Forward planning gets us free energy at a hotel overnight, but we don't depend on this.  I've even been toying with taking the car over to North Africa now there are a limited number of superchargers along the North African coast, but this is unlikely to happen as the last convenient car ferry from here ceased to run in the 1970s!  So... it will probably be a discounted ferry trip to Greece in the spring for the car.  I made an extremely long mains industrial-strength mains lead for our little charging block to pull out on an occasion when someone tells us the nearest domestic socket is too far away, but so far there's never been a need for it.  But we still take it as extra insurance.

You can go one heck of a distance on an overnight charge from just about any domestic socket.  Indeed, for around a year this was our only way to charge the car out here in the sticks, but proved perfectly satisfactory.  The only real motivation to install the wall charger was that we brought one with the car before we really knew what we were doing: it was collecting dust.  The minimum selectable charge rate for the car is a bit on the high side at 5A though - a lower setting would enable us to use limited solar over the day directly, and spread the charge more evenly overnight.  In regular daily use, it's normally fully charged (to 80%) by around 4 or 5am, even when it starts cheap rate charging after 1am.

The mistake most people make when buying an EV is they assume they are buying just another car, rather than buying into a complete ecosystem.  This echoes people who used to but computing equipment from spec sheets and reviews rather than looking at what applications were available and compatibility issues.  The media is the main culprit here, though, as there is just so much garbage printed in the regular motoring columns, and the huge advertising spend of German manufacturers means they can't publish an objective view.

So-called Hybrids: exactly why someone would buy into all the problems of lesser BEVs, and all the problems of ICE at one and the same time, is something I find hard to understand.  It's always amusing to see someone with a plug-in hybrid trying hard to avoid buying dinosaur juice, though!

13 hours ago, Mal said:

I need to pinch that cartoon GGG😄

Cartoon?

Google Data Center Under Construction in Central Ohio

Poor show this still isn't on Zapmap: it's probably missing a load of potential users!

Can someone with a Zapmap account, and who can mark an exact position, please submit it?  A tiny bit difficult from here!

https://www.zap-map.com/add-a-charge-point

...just one competitor here.  It's a race to the bottom of where power is cheapest, and Labour policy will ensure that we have anything but cheap power.

I always hate to be pessimistic, but there are hard facts here that can't be ignored.  So someone, please tell us why will this be any different to the doomed-from-the-outset battery factory?  Blackstone don't seem to have a tenant; so it then becomes a speculation that they will be able to sell it on rapidly and leave someone else holding on to it when the invest in AI fad runs its course.  To them, it's simply one of many fast turns of funds they must invest somewhere!

There are so many things this government could be doing to encourage domestic enterprise.  But - as per usual - it's all about the attention grabbing headline, and not serious consideration of the real factors behind domestic wealth generation.  If the last government was poor, then this one is stunningly off-the-scale incompetent!

3 hours ago, Alan Edgar (Eggy1948) said:

Is this Bedlington Station's first public EV charging point? Clayton Street.

Connector type? Cost per KW/h? Payment methods? And most importantly... the power available? Is it on Zapmap - yet?

Back in 2020 it was very disappointing to see just how backward the NE was when we drove our Tesla off the Zeebrugge ferry at North Shields. We'd driven some 1500Km from Italy and through the Alps with no problems whatsoever.  As soon as we landed on Tyneside, it was like stepping back into the 20th century. The charger at Cramlington was utter c**p and had delivered a measly single kilowatt-hour when we returned to the car after an hour in the shopping centre.  It turned out it couldn't process the credit card it initially accepted and had disconnected. The hotel (which I won't name) had a totally ambivalent attitude to EVs, and much else! They directed us to a couple of points up beside Northumberlandia, which clearly hadn't worked for months.

The only charging that actually worked was at the roundabout on the spine road, and that had a queue for the single pathetic 50Kwh (minus a lot) connector post. It was also overpriced by a lot, and there were ICE vehicles making access to it difficult.

Back on the continent again, it was plain sailing all the way to the Mediterranean, with no waiting anywhere for a charge; zero defective chargers encountered; and two hotels giving us free overnight charging.