mobius

Excellent news! It's just the thing hungry local residents have been crying out for! No longer will they have to walk the extra 25 feet to get to King's Fish & Chips. Oftentimes I've had a takeaway meal from there, but have already eaten it before reaching my home!!! Well, an extra chippy en route will certainly go some way to hold off the hunger pangs and will be an excellent boon to the community. I hope this is merely the first stage of an ever-expanding 'Chipshop Boulevard' to span the full length of Station Road.

The street lights on the Front Street looked wonderful, certainly the best I've seen for a long time. The tree was especially impressive, well done to everyone who was involved.

I don't think the Clayton Arms has *ever* had a full set of unbroken windows. That being said, the brickwork is high quality engineering bricks - typical for pubs in the area - and has always looked, at least presentable. I notice the Percy Arms painted their bricks white, which will make the inevitable vandalism and graffiti stand out a treat

You raise a good point. I doubt the owner will be doing it, it's a long journey from the Channel Islands just to open/close a gate.

Sainsbury? Perhaps, but Waitrose? Ho ho, I doubt many people of Bedlington would fit their demographic. There are branches at Jesmond, Hexham, Ponteland, and Newcastle city centre - all areas with people with high disposable income. Durham Waitrose had to close because out of term time when the students had gone home, there weren't enough customers to make it profitable.

The junction at the end of Brock Lane has been terrible for accidents in recent years. There's been several flower beds ploughed through as cars overshoot the tight bend at the top of the bank, I've long thought the road through East Sleekburn to Cambois should be reopened to help the flow of traffic though the village. Many people in the village have said similar this week. I remember the council blocked the road off against a majority of the residents' wishes.

Did anyone see this? It made the front page of the Journal. Looks like quite a lot of damage has been done. Those poor families, someone could've been killed.

It could be. There's no proper heraldic language to describe a St Cuthbert's Cross - it's just described as 'a cross of St Cuthbert' (cf the arms of Newcastle University) but a cross formy quadrate is used by a couple of colleges at Durham University to represent their link to St Cuthbert and that seems to be the case for Bedlington's arms also.

I agree. The lions look to be holding sparks of lightning - maybe in reference to the sparks at an iron foundry?? I can only guess, but I've emailed the image to a colleague who works for the College of Arms to see if he can turn anything up.

That is an excellent picture there Malcolm, it looks to be taken from the original letters patent. If that document (a great big piece of parchment with heavy wax seals) could be found then the proper and full blazon could easily be known. Strictly they're the arms of BUDC, but since West Bedlington Parish Council can be considered their legitimate successors it would be very simple to have the grant translated to WBPC.

Splendid photographs Adam, a dreadful pity about the weather looking at the BDC banner, think the blazon of the arms could be revised as: Argent in base a cross formy quadrate sable between four lozenges of the second, in chief azure a lymphad or in full sail the sail charged with a cross formy of the second between two lions combattant or. The lions look to be holding something but I can't quite see from the image. Well done to everyone who organised what looks to have been a memorable day

Great news! I'll keep my eyes peeled!

Excellent! I'd love to see a scan of them, if only to see how good my memory is

Hi there I'm a bit of an amateur heraldist in my spare time, but nothing relating to the old BUDC turns up in any of the standard catalogues of UK heraldry. The civicheraldry website shows nothing either. But, I remember seeing an image of it, a *long* time ago. IIRC the arms were something like: In base a cross formy quadrate between four lozenges, in chief a lymphad in full sail with pennant the sail charged with a cross couped between two lions combattant. The crest a Bedlington Terrier on hindquarters supporting ??? (maybe a pickaxe?). Motto 'De Profundis' - From out of the depths. The image I saw was black and white sadly, so I can't give the tinctures or metal colours. The lozenges are probably sable (black) in reference to the coal mining history of the town. The current Bedlington Golf Club was owned by the old BUDC, so they may still have some images of the arms in their records. Failing that it might be worthwhile to ask at the College of Arms in London. The current 'coat of arms' used by the golf club do appear to be derived from the old BUDC arms, but I don't think they have been officially granted and are thus, illegal.

Just imagine how unbearable the French would be if they were the only European country with an independent nuclear deterrent. We have to keep Trident to keep the French in their place!

Oh joy! The candidate list has been published. *clicky* (opens in MS Word) Nice to see faith the Conservative candidate has in our district - he doesn't even live here, his address is listed as 'somewhere in the Ilford North Constituency' Still, at least it's more than the BNP & UKIP candidates bothered to give.

I watched it, and am still chuckling at the idea that David Cameron has met a black man

Given his criminal convictions it seems appropriate he's photographed behind bars Let's hope when, sorry if he gets elected, he'll be a bit more visible around the constituency than Denis Murphy. In all the years I've watched debates in the House of Commons on TV and in person, I've never once been able to spot Denis Murphy on the benches. While I don't expect our MP to become a media celebrity as some politicians, when a significant number of people here think their MP is Ronnie Campbell, after 13 years in office you know you're doing something wrong.

It's interesting to see the constituencies which (in contravention of the Lord Chnacellor's recommendations) are refusing to count on election night. From the Electoral Commission: Argyll & Bute Berwick Upon Tweed Blyth Valley Broadland Buckingham Cheltenham Copeland Henley Hexham Huntingdon Kenilworth & Southam Lancaster & Fleetwood Morecambe & Lunesdale NE Hampshire Norwich North Oxford West & Abingdon Penrith & the Border Saffron Walden Skipton & Ripon St Ives Torridge & West Devon Wansbeck Wantage Warwick & Leamington Westmorland & Lonsdale Nowhere in Northumberland will begin counting until Friday. I can appreciate the rural constituencies like Berwick should take longer - especially since it contains Holy Island and a lot of scattered settlements, but why should Wansbeck and Blyth Valley take the same time? I hardly imagine it's going to be a close count in either place.

It's easy to adopt such a stance, it's common within an overwhelmingly safe seat such as Wansbeck, but by not voting, even if only out of protest, you are as complicit in the slide down the pan as any other. I'd go so far as to say it is this attitude which contributes heavily to the paucity of electors' voting power in our constituency. It's a self-defeating cycle. Indeed you could wonder exactly how the current method of government can be described as an operating democracy. The party system does rather subvert the democratic principle, with a relatively small elite selecting candidates and deciding policy. The candidates are presented to us, and we vote for the party, not a person. I've joked amongst friends that Harold Shipman* could get elected in Wansbeck as long as he wore the right coloured rosette. I don't see it going away any time soon, because the people who can change the system are exactly those who have done very well out of the current arrangement, and who therefore are unlikely to see any problem with it. * I doubt if even being dead would present much of a bar to his selection

A look through the edit history of his page on Wikipedia makes for interesting reading also.

Not necessarily, but I get your point. Though understandable, prohibiting people from using removeable drives to transfer files could be enough to render the entire project worthless. Having people use the computers to type up CVs when they could be prepared elsewhere might create a backlog of people who really do need to use the computers. There are a few half-decent free AV and anti spyware applications out there which could be of use in these circumstances.

Do you mean mongrel perchance? Mongle means something quite different ...

But will the flats be occupied? The residential development upon the old Palace nightclub in Bedlington Station stands almost empty. I understand the Muter family is behind the Old School development - well I hope the flats won't be priced according to the 'Keenleyside Price Index' or else only footballers/bankers/oligarchs will be able to move in.

Use a Tesco carrier bag, apparently they're now biodegradable and rot after a couple of months. A while ago, before I learnt this, I put on a coat and took out an old carrier bag from one of the pockets. The bag had rotted and crumbled into powder in my hands - I thought it was due to mice.