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It only worked because other forces came together to make sure it worked. Unfortunately the kids came away with a simplistic view, and now think that all that's needed is a bit of popular acclaim. Tesco is going to do what Tesco is going to do. All that matters is Tesco's bottom line, and local opinion has bu&*%r all to do with that!

Yes, they "the trailer" probably got the news from this strange website: http://www.bedlingto...peal-decisions/ ...where it was published nine days ago. Some people might say that that's a loaded question. i.e. they do care, are sad to see the school go, but realise that there is no alternative to having the site redeveloped as residential. And - as there are no viable alternatives proposed - it's better to have nineteen decent flats and carefully dictated landscaping, than an eyesore, public hazard, and somewhere where sooner or later some young kid will get badly hurt. Which "radio button" do they select to express that opinion?

What a dumb question! I'd have though this was perfectly obvious. You can pick up a copy at the Bedlington Public Baths at Humford (opening days only). Failing that at the Bedlington Shopping Mall (see 1960's Town Plan). Too far to walk then nip in to the Bedlington People's Theatre and Cinema(s) (Glebe Rd. / Palace Rd.), the Locke Hall, the Netherdale Venue, or indeed the Ticket Office at Bedlington Station. Then there's the Bedlington Fire Station, North Ridge; the Bedlington Ambulance Station, Millbank Tce. If you are very quick you might get a copy of our survey at the Bedlington Library, Glebe Road; the Bedlington Station Library; the Bedlington Community Center, Front Street West, and the Courts Building, off Market Place - any of these before the keys get lost! I'd also suggest the "Parish Hall" (Old Infant's School), but risky as you might get mown down by a bulldozer! If you're not feeling totally spoilt for choice by now then try any one of the closed Electrical Dealers, Department Stores, Social Clubs, General Dealers, Public Houses, Butchers Shops, Bakeries, Jewellers, Shoe Shops, Greengrocers, Clothes Shops, Delis, Hardware Stores, Paper & Paint, Gas/Electricity Board Showrooms, Furniture Shops ... ...

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/the-billion-dollar-hoax/story-e6frfhqf-1225823736564 Today Australia awakes. But what are the BBC Time-lords going to do when they finally have to admit they've been feeding the great British public a load of cods-wallop, and worse: censoring informed dissent? Which of the Beeb journos is going to stick his/her neck out, risk the job, and tell the unvarnished truth? Gentle climbdown seems the safest strategy. Retreat, slowly, in good order, and blame another commander for the debacle. "It was obvious to me/us all along."

We have a long historical understanding with the French. We call them frogs and buy their cars - and they call us ros-bifs and buy our... well, there must be something that they buy! The part you can't talk about is that we are contracted to rescue them whenever their teutonic friends overstay their welcome. In return they save us from our irrational fears: like not having bountiful ultra-clean nuclear energy and glow-in-the-dark sheep.

Did you notice the word "General" there Mons? This one is about who runs the Country. You know - that flag thingy you keep waving? With a bit of luck we might even get a Prime Minister that someone - even his own party - actually voted for. I think it's called democracy; but I could be wrong, as it's such a distant memory. One time we were told you needed "a mandate" to govern. In other words a party couldn't just stuff in any half-wit they felt like without having one of these General Election thangs sharpish like. But somehow, somewhere - like not invading other people's countries on private whim - that got forgotten about. In Bedlington we even had a cooncil with real money to spend. One which didn't have to go cap in hand to some political appointee for a favour, giving us some of our own money back. Have a look at the old photos; do you see BUDC on some of the vehicles? Yes, they were often Bloody Useless .... but they were OUR bloody useless. We could have leant, we would have learnt. But now we have woken up we've been shafted and can't do anything! First shafting was from Old Labour who played the class card to ensure we were left back in the 19th century; then from Britain's worst ever (until Gordon Brown) Prime Minister Ted Heath (Tory) who was behind the Wansbeck nonsense. He also managed to bring the entire country to a halt - but that's another story. But, grand champion by a mile, Gordon Brown has also managed to get us into the worst economic mess of all time. This one is a world beater - far worse on a per-head basis than the USA is in. We haven't felt the impact of it yet, but we are about to. So what are you going to do about it? March around with a few dozen dim neo-Nazi weirdos and be laughed at, or get out there and exercise your (rapidly disappearing) democratic right to get this moron out of power? It really doesn't matter who you vote for just as long as you don't waste your vote on extremist crap. Either of the other parties have semi-competent people who will at least make a start on getting us out of this mess.

Goodness, how did you get that graphic past the moderators! Think I'd better hit the complaint button. BTW when are they going to issue the patch for the patch?

Actually Brown has cost us even more than I thought. We have to pay this back, or our kids do! http://www.debtbombshell.com/ Anyone who isn't shaken rigid by this isn't living in the real world. It's not just another big number it's our declining standard of living for the next quarter of a century. Nor is it "a global problem" - it's OUR problem.

"Well, he would, wouldn't he?" He's boxed himself in anyway. All advice will be to hold off as long as possible for some signs of recovery he can point to. But as it's going to take a decade or more to sort out his £800,000,000,000 debt there's little chance of that. Won't stop all the kidology of course, and the Tories aren't going to tell the whole truth either, for fear of frightening the horses.

This disorganised shower can't even keep a confidence amongst themselves. It's already on the Bedlington Calendar.

If you go to memory specialist http://www.zoombits.co.uk/ you'll find that they are having a 10% off sale. All you do is enter promo code 10sale to take advantage of this. But DON'T BUY THIS as what's not obvious is that you can do better than 10%. Enter promo code newsale20 instead, and then you should get a 20% discount! Presumably this only works for a first purchase, but we will leave ways around this as an exercise for the reader.

Look he's got an AOL e-mail address so he must know what he's doing! And, when he quotes from good old socialist Norman Tebbit on his website he must be for the workers, so I'm going to vote for him! Unless... unless... by some fluke the Tories win the next election. Now if that were to happen they'd just ignore Bedlington like the Labour/NuLabour alliance always has - because we'd be beyond the pale, and there'd be no votes/new votes to be had here. So we'd end up shafted once again! Then - yes, then - a vote for war veteran Simon really would be a wasted vote - like he tells us one for the Tories would. So, how to use our heads and get this place out of its historic bind? Needs more thinking on... maybe I should ask Malcolm?

Would you like to tell us WHERE it's proposed it should be banned from? Then the poll might have some meaning. You're surely not advocating that in our free country (allegedly devoid of chanting mindless idiots) people should not be permitted to wear dress of their choice? Safety, decency, security and identity considerations aside, of course. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret -- notice anything else wrong? Anyway, good job MV isn't still in charge; else this one would be closed quicker than a council school with 5mm of snow!

dabs.com (on Hitachi) - ebuyer too, and perhaps others.

A one terabyte 3.5" Hard Drive just spotted on offer for below £60 (yes, even including that increased VAT). Two terabytes for around £116 - so even cheaper per Gigabyte. How long before we see the sub-£100 two terabyte drive? i.e. £50 a terabyte (or a fiver for 100GB). My first hard drive 10MB ( 0.01GB), and it cost an arm and a leg! There were 5MB ones available at the time. What's really galling about the storage revolution is that the things are now far faster, and many many times more reliable too. If only other things had seen this rate of improvement over thirty years!

In law it's treated as trading coupons. Really no different to issuing any form of promissory note - like a cheque for instance. It would be illegal to put Bank of Bedlington or some such on them as that would be misrepresentation - and would we really want to be associated with such rummy institutions anyway! But nothing wrong with calling them a Bedlington Pound. It should be illegal to do what our banks do: create money out of thin air! But the whole broken system relies on public ignorance. Any honest banker would tell you that if the real truth were universally known they (politicians and bankers) wouldn't get away with it. Of course paper currency is only a promissory note anyway. It all boils down to who people trust, and as far as I'm concerned that's not HM Govt.! Months now and they are still stalling in repaying my tax refund! No disagreement that it's due, it's just they haven't got the capacity to process it. Ha ha; wonder how far that excuse would get me if the boot was on the other foot! Meanwhile, I must pay interest on the money, and I can't recover the loss from big-spending Gordon!

Someone (the traders?) have to back the currency to ensure that it's fully convertible into Gordo's funny-money. Putting the same amount on interest somewhere would ensure that it's rock (not Northern) solid. A refreshing change from "real" money created by banks, which has only about 4% backing from deposits with the Bank of England. Key is getting enough traders interested, as you can completely discount any interest from banks and government - who will always see it as a challenge to their monopoly. This is a bit like what the insurance companies do - invest the premiums and collect the interest for themselves. So anyone backing it wouldn't be a bit out of pocket, or running any significant risk. In this case the interest would go to the community, as all that is in effect happening is that you are taking a £UK out of circulation, placing it on interest, and replacing it with a £B. The process can be reversed on demand, but as confidence in the local currency builds that demand will wane. The really interesting thing to do would be to tie it to a stronger currency than Sterling. Now that would put a hell of a lot of noses out when Gordon's ongoing spending addiction causes Sterling to fall even further. It would give the average person access to the hedges enjoyed by the super-rich, and our oh-so-prudent bankers! The Bedlington Pound could easily become worth more than UK Pound!

I'm sure he'd put on a better act in the Commons than Dennis Skinner (and others of similar name). No, wait! There's another interesting statistic to be got there: 30,163,317 HIV/AIDS infected people 105,667 Deaths caused by HIV/AIDS this year So, get AIDS and live to be 300! How did Ricky Gervais miss that insensitive one at the Golden Globes?

Was going to post the Youtube video but it has been taken down. Probably just as well; embarrassment saved all around! OK, I found an appropriate video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9PmpTOx9c8

Yup, it's only that 19,059 nuovi immigrati quest'anno (and their credit cards) that keeps the population from falling. Lowest birth rate in the world probably not an entirely bad thing in a nation which still appears to believe that the solution to the waste disposal crisis is just to put it in a supermarket carrier bag, drive into the scenic countryside, and deposit as far as your arm will extend without actually getting out of the car. However most people do know that the civically responsible thing to do is - drop a match now and then!

Skipping over issues like car production being surprisingly small given the population (and that illegal drugs are an even better business to be in than computers), there's one stand-out thing in the environment section: This is that carbon dioxide output (show to ten digits) is racing upward, yet temperature increase has to be extended to eleven digits just to produce an obvious upward movement. That increase is so small that it is a wonder it can be measured at all. Could it now be static or even falling, and isn't this well within the range of normal solar output fluctuations? Are the ice caps of Mars still melting? I suspect maybe not, and if they are are how do those have anything to do with man-made CO2 emissions? I don't think you are going to get cogent answers to any of those questions from our climate "scientists". But here's an even more interesting one they won't answer: Dumb kitchen table "experiments" aside - where is the scientific proof that there is any kind of correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and mean temperature? Actually there is some correlation, but they wouldn't want you to look too closely at it because all studies show that it is delayed something between 200 and 1900 years! The mechanism is obviously a lot more complex than the simplistic explanations offered, and the timescale of same won't make for imminent doom and disaster scenarios, and so put money in their pockets!

Go back to the 1950's, even 1960's, and the Front Street was a hive of activity. Not so many cars as there are now, but those cars didn't drive right on through. There were factory units in the old Council Yard that provided real jobs making stuff that people wanted to buy, and at lunch time those people, together with many other retail and service workers, came out onto the street and patronised the shops. There was real economic activity on the South side too. It certainly wasn't only the pits that drove the economy. What happened to those factory units - well they got "zoned" by the planners. Moved to the middle of beyond where they steadily died. Instead of walking or biking to work you needed a car, but cheap petrol would go on forever (only relatively lightly double-taxed), and you could park for free more or less where you liked. Instead of just nipping across to Bill Scott's engineering works to get a part drilled or welded and your machine back in service in no time, you got on the phone to the smoke, and then waited days for delivery. This was the era when bigger (we were told) was better. Dozens of "inefficient" small motor manufacturers and parts suppliers were cajoled and bullied by government into large "efficient" groups like the British Motor Corporation. New Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (not a stranger to Bedlington Front Street) told us all about how our future would be forged in "the white heat of the technological revolution". But the politicians and the planners got it all very wrong. They "zoned" countless millions into white elephants like Cramlington and Killingworth "new towns" when all they had to do was provide a little help here and there to established towns of the region, and allow those towns to develop naturally. As a result they destroyed thousands of small-town economies that worked, all in pursuit of a mirage. The real tragedy is that there are people who still seem to believe that central planning, and even local "grand schemes" can deliver any lasting benefit at all. If you visit the current centres of real activity and innovation in the world you'll be struck by how intertwined it all is. There's been little or no central planing, very little zoning; if there's a need for this or that people just get on and do it. I'm not advocating complete planning anarchy, but maybe something like micro-zoning where light industry is permitted (actually encouraged) just off the front street. Any functioning town needs an economic heart. It used to be the colliery, of course; but the Bedlington blunder was removing other light industry, right at a time when we should have been going all out to encourage it. I'm not talking offices or airy-fairy "innovation centers" here, but places where people get their hands dirty. Ideally we should have some light industry within a couple of minutes walk of the Market Place, but is there anywhere now left that hasn't had "for profit" houses built on it? And, we've now created a major NIMBY problem too! We also need just a portion of that big government (national and regional) squander in the hands of our own local people, and a free hand to dispense it in any direction where it will aid sustainable employment. Sure there will be local squabbling and some mistakes; but they will be our squabbles and our mistakes, and local people will see them and directly correct them. Local authorities without money to spend are a sham, and we shouldn't accept the power structure which has been foisted off on us without any sort of mandate. The past has taught us that small and local is good, and that governments - national and even regional - have (at best) a huge propensity for waste, and (at worst) are totally counterproductive. We need real change - a restoration of local democracy with its own spending power - and not the illusory change which has been imposed on us!

Almost right: two idiots driving down the Union Canal in Scotland. They only got away with it because there's so much muck in it there. They were charged with reckless conduct, but should have been committed!