Malcolm Robinson

Ah ha the great T Dan....... the man who almost single handily cleared the worst of the ghettos out of Newcastle. Ok he might have had his hands in the till but if he was of a different political party and based in London he almost certainly would have been knighted not imprisoned! Funny how sanctimonious the working class can be in treatment of their own!

Perhaps an unfortunate use of words considering the predilections of some of our elected representatives!

I don't think you are too far away there Monsta! I think sitting and prospective main party candidates might just get a spanking this time!

How come it takes 2 quarters of negative figures to go into recession but only one to come out of it?????????????????? After all that intervention and we see 0.1%.....good use of money?

In that case someone need a lesson in basic grammar.........never end a sentence with a conjunctive!

Still not really GGG, I get PDF's all the time and I have had to get the conversion program so I can convert into word and use the information myself. If you can set a link to print out say a booking form or airline tickets why can't the same thing be done for a poster? Ignorance is bliss..........

GGG, I am starting to get worried about the real state this country is in. The most important, in economic/financial terms, election almost in living memory and what do we have to choose from? I don't think any of them have a clue! The country's bankrupt and the footsie and domestic house prices rise????? They have certainly not bottomed out far enough to take the pain needed and get back to reality. In fact I would argue they would have to go way down past sustainability before they bounce back to reality! The estate agents and bankers I talk to all talk about when we get back to the top of the market prices........knock knock is anyone in.......does no one realise they are talking about rolling more debt up onto an already unstable 1 trillion pounds worth? The accountants took over the world decades ago and we have let them play with their numbers. We should have put them in play pens and kept watch over them! What is needed are politicians with some backbone and belief. Backbone to stick to what they tell us they will do if elected and belief in whatever political system they say they belong to. Without that we are drifting and the 'correction' will be that much harder when it comes.

hello malcom i hope you are from bedlington . i am an x bedlington man .i moved to blyth 40 years ago ihave read some posts about gallagers park on your forum cant remember where it is .could you tell me where it is situated please. thanking you . This what you are after bed............? http://friendsofgallagherpark.ning.com/ Your not going to say you have a dieing aunty or you need to move money out of an account in Blyth are you????

Mine opens fine??????? Are there just 2 pages? The bottom of page 2 left hand side, would seem to suggest there should be more to that paragraph?

Mr D, have you heard of 'turnover per square foot', it's the holy grail of this sort of company. Everything which is stocked is stacked up against this criteria, every stock item has to justify its shelf space. On top of that everything you see, smell and even the ambience you feel inside a hypermarket these days is carefully measured and implanted. I would guess there is someone deep in the bowels of Tesco Towers who has a graph showing projected footfall and turnover for a Bedlington superstore and it must be showing a marginal case for development. Considering current government intervention on out of town retailing, high street impact, etc the only way this company can grow organically and domestically is to develop these marginal sites. If you think a small delegation of our population can have any influence whatsoever over these business principles.......................

Merc, That is quite a pessimistic statement isn't it? If we are talking post industrial revolution I would have thought a lot of the pollution was caused by ignorance and fiscal need, both areas where we could make change. I don't believe we are endemic polluters by genetic design! For me the real problem on the horizon is population growth, which might just be sustainable present day but will soon tip over the edge, if it hasn't already. Given that the mature western economies have, by and large, population demographics which show almost stagnation if not reduction in their figures (financial pressure on lifestyle probably) then it follows that the third world and emerging countries have population explosions as they frantically follow our patterns of industrial development leading to even greater and completely unsustainable pollution.

I'm with Monsta on this one. Ok the climatologists might have their own agendas but without a shadow of a doubt we have polluted this planet, possibly beyond repair, and we should be doing something about it.

You wanting the pooper scooper rights Monsta?

It may well be to do with the gravitational matrix we are entering into with our celestial alignment around winter solstice 2012, as the Mayans predicated. Whole new ball game, anyone want to fund my research a couple of million dollars will do it?

Not really, NCC put on the pre-Xmas stuff there but was never going to keep it up. The town council was talking about maybe putting stuff on there as is the Bedlington Partnership so you never know......

No but we are going to have to do future 'events' there ourselves.

We're doomed Captain Mannering, we're doomed ay tell ya!

I can see what you are saying Hermit but I don't agree with the adjectives you use. Once a locality becomes disengaged with the community, or visa versa, it begins a downward spiral ultimately leading to neglect and dereliction where no one cares about what happens there. That is what we have to come together and fight as a community! There are so many facets to consider though, sociological ones, educational ones, aspirational ones, commercial ones etc etc etc someone could write their doctorate thesis on this stuff, maybe someone should. There are a lot of posters on this site who at first glace look to be negative, having a go at councils etc, but I believe they do so from a position of concern, in much the same way your posting has been done. I think we should harness that 'Bedlingtonism' and use it as one of the principles in the battle to reinvigorate the town.

Rea, I don't know what else we can do to publicise this stuff??? We got a NPL editorial, which is ongoing, it has been talked about at the Bedlington Forum and Partnership meetings, and we put it up on this web site. I am not having a go but if there is anything else you can suggest............ The 20 acres has a restrictive covenant on the land use, that is the only reason there hasn't been any houses built there never mind anything else. As for your other question, really we short circuited the need for a survey and instead said that because there is NO provision of these facilities in the immediate area the need was clearly there. The consultants are coming up to hold talks with any possible users and we had to supply contact details for any local user groups that might use such a facility in the future. As for location and cost, these are a bit more complicated. All and any possible sites around the town are being considered and there are two groups with outline bids going into that pot. You have to realise in the current financial climate, never mind the fact that we have been on the wrong side of the tracks for 30 odd years, we are operating under very real constraints and a balance has to be found which might not tick all the boxes we hope for, but, provide us with a real possibility of actually seeing something worthwhile and effective put up. That is why we had to get independent specialists involved who will for once unequivocally answer the sorts of questions you ask. Once those questions have been answered, and no one knows which way it might go (!!!!), there should be a development plan, business plan and architectural plans to follow, they are part of the brief to these consultants.

I am wondering what this night time economy people are talking about actually is? I presume its not just pubs and restaurants? I agree with GGG, Tesco will only every take notice of its bottom line and maintaining its market placing. Everything else is PR!

Haven't read the NPL article yet but I would guess the positioning of a new build leisure centre in Ashington might well be included in the new regeneration plans for the old Asda and surrounding site????? 'My view is that we've always been told that there might be funding available for a new leisure centre e.g. from Sport England, but we would never be able to afford the running costs. If the money could be found to build a leisure centre, perhaps from a combination of grants and council funding if available, then you could well get interest in a private company to run it on behalf of the council as they would not have had to take the risk of making a big investment up front.' There are other ways to skin the same rabbit. The bid we submitted has a large degree of inbuilt sustainability and there will be a choice to be made later as to how it is overseen.

Actually Rea we do have a professional study being carried out right now into leisure requirements for Bedlington. The bit that narks me is that I know the hoops and hurdles we had to jump though to get this study while Ashington has one handed to them on a plate. Oh well, why change the habits of a lifetime! This study, completely independent and done by one of the country's leading groups in the field, will answer the question once and for all and even if nothing comes from it straightaway it will stand for quite a while into the future ready to be used. That is of course presupposing it comes out and says we have a need for such facilities but I would have thought that a no brainer! Anyway the company are coming back up to talk to all interested parties in a couple of weeks time then a public presentation is pencilled in for 25th March at the Community Centre.

At least you were able to try and fly a flag, not that easy here these days....

Have a good one cobba.........

I bet the size of the country is permed in there somewhere. I find that hard to believe in straight per capita terms!