threegee

It would be interesting to know who there is to vote for, and why we should? The Labour leader of WDC promised me he'd come on here and answer questions over a year ago! Maybe we can persuade one of the other parties to make a similar promise, and keep it?

I wouldn't use that adjective - ask for what you are due, no more and no less! Other than that will be read as weakness. You have the great advantage of knowing the banks current policy, so don't give them the counter advantage of knowing that you're not fully decided. Remember, you are just a minor irritation to them, and the very last thing they want is the publicity. Stick the court papers on them at the earliest possible moment. As long as you do your homework, as others have, it will pan out OK. It's a well-worn path, with plenty of help on the net. Life is nothing but risk, however this one scores rather low.

Tony Blair is about to announce that he's going soon. This even though at the last General Election, and in the Labour Party Election Manifesto, he promised to "serve a full term". He has now made it clear that he's anointing Gordon Brown as his successor. Should we be forced to accept this [Vote Yes], or should there be a General Election [Vote No]?

That's nonsense - the banks are worth countless billions, and the BoE stands behind them anyway. This could be a big mistake. The banks make their money from people's inertia, and it sounds like they are reading you right too. The longer you leave it the easier it is for them to claim an implied acceptance, and where would you be then? Are you then going to take them to court fighting on their own ground? The other matter could take years to settle in the courts, and probably will! The best advice is already in this thread, but it sounds like you are talking yourself out of doing the necessary.

Observant members will note that the menu item Gallery has now changed to the plural. One click will show you why. It's intended to display a processed version of the Bedlington Places Gallery only on the homepage - real soon now! So.. any member can put their own pic on the frontpage, quite automagically. If the wilder members of our community behave (Mick) this will be without pre-approval - live dangerously I say! The software is now much improved on what we had even a few weeks back. It's no longer necessary to reduce your camera/phone pics, you can just bang them up from your browser. So, I expect to see a lot more contributions. You can choose which Gallery your new Album belongs to, and you can create multiple albums. You can make them private or public at will, and you can even password protect the private ones, or specify exactly which members can view them - excluding everyone else. The public galleries are now truly public. i.e. anyone visiting Bedlington.co.uk can view them. So you might want to review your Public/Private settings on some of your albums.

Nope, Kathy moved to a twee village in Northumberland when she achieved fame and fortune.

So why didn't you - or anyone else - vote for it, yet?

PM me and say what you want and I will sort it. Note that changing your display name has nothing to do with registering multiple times. You are permitted to change your display name twice in any one month, BUT other members can always see the history of what you've done.

A large W with circle and bar. i.e. NO WANSBECK!

Can you upload your pic of the Red Lion again please B. I think 4G was upgrading the gallery software or something whilst you were uploading, and it got corrupted. Sorry about that!

You should be able to PM me. However I will ring you tomorrow (Monday) as it's too late now.

Macromedia Fireworks 8, but not by me.

Please only comment on the header as the page layout is nothing like finished. We KNOW there are a significant number of issues, and the homepage has active content to add, and tidying up to do. It will display a random image from members galleries. i.e. There'll be a distinct Pictures of Bedlingtonshire section in the galleries, from which the image will be randomly selected. The sponsorship stuff isn't in place yet either. Whats on the homepage is only a placeholder.

Yes, we know the Galleries and Blogs haven't been integrated into the new software yet - in the next 24! There are also a number of layout issues to work through over the next couple of days. It will all be worth it in the end! And, sorry for not giving any proper notice of the work. One thing you will note is how very much faster this software is!

Another large cull of timewasters and lurkers earlier in the week. So far well over a thousand registrations using the new software, over 900 of which have been culled because they didn't even bother to say hi! I will be e-mailing people who haven't logged-in for at least 6 months quite shortly. Probably the only e-mail from the board they will ever get! Reducing the inactivity period to 6 months (plus a bit of grace) seems a reasonable step. We are also opening the Northumberland forum to non-members as an experiment. Posts will not appear until moderated though, to counter spamming. Moderation may take a few hours. Use it or loose it! This domain is for active citizens of Bedlington and district only, we are not in the biz of collecting inactive members.

It's very modest. We need a total of £600 a year to keep things going and pay for further development. This includes server, registration, software licensing, and a little professional time. There's absolutely no intention of continuing to run bedlington.co.uk on other than a community support basis. Rather than pack the place out with banners and other unsightly stuff that means six sponsors at £100 a shot. So far we have one, which is funding the current work and software upgrades. It's my intention to get on the phone and ask for sponsorship next week. The first five Bedlington businesses who say yes to < £2 a week for a year get it. After that they go on queue for first refusal for next year. The sponsor gets home page placement of their 240 x 400 advert (a proper ad., not a banner) and a 1 of 6 basis, and generous mentions elsewhere. We'll do the artwork for them for free, and they can use the ad elsewhere if they want. What they also get is their own website linked to from the Google #1 on the Bedlington keyword. Which is worth a fortune in the search engine positioning stakes. You could pay a search engine positioning outfit many times £100 and still get nowhere! The theme is: Keep it very simple, keep it fully transparent, and keep it fully voluntary!

Site revamp in progress - fully funded by a real live commercial sponsor! Five more commercial sponsors needed to keep the wheels rolling, but I guess that I'm just going to have to get on the phone. Anyone with any ideas of which Bedlingtonshire businesses would make fitting sponsors please post or PM me? It's not a charity thing, they'll get far more bang than they pay for in supporting our Town!

P.S. He who pushed me out of the way this afternoon says the background is gone! And the comment about videos is only half-correct - a "video only" gallery reeell soon.

Done, and will do every day. Reason: 30,000 people and no proper political representation - we NEED this! Please feel free to borrow that. Voted: 27th April 28th April

That's what the Lo-Fi Version link below is for. Works great on my Nokia mobile phone (and even more brain-dead browsers)!

Just spotted three more tatty buttons on the Gallery upload page - before anyoneone else reports them. As good as fixed right now. BTW the Gallery can be much improved I think. Made a few quick changes already. Did you know that you can upload videos too? Think we need a few categories for different sorts of albums. I'm not so sure that, given the thumbnail sizes, a black background will improve things though. It's a bit "common" too!

That one was already cleaned up. I thought the 3D effect looked OK considering it was only 10x10 pixels. Must be your monitor or something?! Anyway, it's now boring old white to suit you! The header was scheduled for a redo as part of the Homepage revamp.

I cleaned up a few of the tatty graphics this morning. Mostly the blue buttons on the striped background. Can't see any other ones that look strange, but there are dozens and dozens of the little b's, and I don't even pretend that I've explored all the contexts that they display in. So... if anyone comes across any tatty looking graphics then post or PM me explaining where they are (copy the URL) and how you got there - please! Homepage due for a tidy up now.