Malcolm Robinson

A fine oxymoron for a thread title there mrsvic! If there is any ‘proof’ of trying to get this sorted out before anyone receives a ‘court’ letter I would be tempted to counter sue for aggravation, stress etc due to NCC incompetence. In fact it is starting to look like a class action! It does show just how the seamless changeover everyone was promised was always going to be hot air. If the whole idea was to bring local government closer to the people it serves and make it more accountable having remote offices and fewer representatives would seem strictly at odds with that scenario? At the end of the day we own a local council office, its half way up Front Street and perfectly suitable to oversee the Bedlingtonshire area! Please post an address where we can send the cakes with the files and hacksaws!

Maybe if they got back into matrimonial work instead of conveyancing....... I think the niche retailers are exactly what Bedders needs. There is already the largest retailer in the country and one of the most discounted ones who between them should be able to supply the staple goods for the immediate population. To get people to come and shop/spend a day in the town other attractions are needed. (Keeping a large FREE car park would be one!) Instead of throwing cash at multi millionaires maybe offering help at the sharp end might be a more productive way of getting out of this recession. Help with business rates and negotiating progressive rent increases so people could at least try their business ideas out and not end up in hock would be my preferred route as that may give the time needed to establish stand alone businesses. A uniform business rate for the country is crazy when applied to places like Bedders! I don't believe empty shops are indicative of a lack of entrepreneurial flair in the district, rather they suggest a cost/possible reward equation as being too far biased one way. Some real help to address that bias might even produce some sustainable local jobs, as well as giving people the chance to try out their ambitions. There has to be a cohesive commercial strategy agreed for the town, with ALL sides involved, or we continue with the ad hoc arrangements we have now which leaves Bedlington at a complete disadvantage to other towns in the area who have business development managers/town centre managers etc. (We already have a much too commercially underused asset, this web site!) I say all this knowing that one of the commercial units to be built at the side of the new Tesco's will be one which supposedly looks after this sort of thing in the district. However staffed by ex WDC grandees who have consistently failed the needs of Bedlington for 30 years I see no reason to be optimistic as to their future input!

They didn't ditch him when they needed to and now their seats are at risk. Let's just cling on in the hope that something will turn up and sod the country! I think half the front bench could easily loose their seats at the next election. The problem is that we could replace ‘Oc and Ik’ with “Bootsie and Smudge’ another less than desirable double act! If the general population have to get their sleeves rolled up and dig their way out of this mess it would be nice to see that reflected in our political leadership. This budget seems to be unravelling almost hour by hour. The figures are terrible but the cure looks even worse. 20-30 years of debt repayments just to get back to a PSD requirement we had a few years ago and which itself was pretty bad, especially at a time of record tax receipts. Its unbelievable and sheer mismanagement on a grand scale. To paraphrase, they are morally bankrupt, financially bankrupt and intellectually bankrupt with no real ideas of how to get out of the mess of their own making.

Its maybe more about league tables and performance targets these days......

I was shocked and dismayed listening the Darling’s pre budget report in November, which I think was overwritten by Gordo, but the budget of yesterday was even worse as it included at least some figures. If there was such a thing as GB LTD and this was its accounts would you buy into the company? If not how is the gov going to get its bond issues away to provide the capital needed? Ah yes you can always print more of the stuff! Dear me we are really in the crapper. The massive debt overhang will draw down any, much heralded, recovery and mean everyone will have less and less disposable income as any and all taxes have to go up to try and repay this debt. Interesting to hear Darling say basic rates of income tax will not go up for the next year or two but afterwards “we will all have to make a contribution!” The headline grabbing rise to 50% for anyone earning over 150K might produce about 10 billion over the next few years, as long as those people don’t pay tax avoidance lawyers, while the gov increases PSD by 750 billion. Anyone want to guess who will have to pick up the shortfall of 740 billion and that doesn’t include what has been thrown at the problem already. Its not about politics anymore its about survival!

Sadly no exclusive interview with OBL, but just having a potter down Borneo way to hang out with some monkeys. Far be it from me to say such a thing but you didn’t have to go all that way............

I think the ‘perfect’ alignment with the centre of our universe, rebalancing our planets ‘wobble’, the inversion of the poles due to solar storms and the plant’s orbital path might just throw some of those calculations out monsta! Nice political side swipe Mrsvic! By 2012 the basic rate of tax will be 50% and rent and rates will be astronomic even just to keep the pension differentials enjoyed by some ex local authority bods!

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

This is all very interesting, and merits greater investigation. Meanwhile, I'm strapping myself to my desk for all of 2012, in case the increased gravitational pull of Jupiter sucks me out of the window. LOL. Winter solstice 2012 to be, more or less, exact! (And I thought Aquarius was supposed to being in a new age of free love or was that just the songs?)

Maybe it a sign of a government too long in power, just as the last Tory one was. Morals and ethics seem to be discarded in an attempt to retain that power or it might just be down to plain old arrogance? Whatever it is we are seeing a carbon copy of the last few years of Major's government. Will any political party dare to assume the mantle of cleaning up political life this time?

Like most economic variants it's cyclical (pub closures) and probably due to reasons beyond the managements immediate control. Some will survive and they will offer their customers what they want in their preferred surroundings and at a price they are comfortable with. Wetherspoons has been talked about in Bedlington for many years but obviously the town doesn't fit the potential business criteria in their business models. Had the opportunity been taken years ago to make the town a retail destination by exploiting its pivotal geographic location within SE Northumberland that may have been different. Maybe Tesco's, if they ever do get on with it, can start to address that perception, time will tell but it gets harder not easier as other towns fight to make their own way up the pecking order. Whatever else it needs Bedlington does need a commercial plan for development or it will face the very real prospect of becoming just another dormitory town with a less than salubrious retail heart.

That would scar anyone for life.............

GGGG, where did you get that pic of wor lasses bloomers? GGG, I don’t know which way I lean on the current global warming issue but I do believe that all the pollution in man’s recent history, since the industrial revolution say, must be having an effect. You cannot expect a natural balance to remain when you pump synthetic pollutants out so something has to give; I just don’t know what yet. One thing is for sure, Nature has its own ways of dealing with excess and that normally means a drastic cull of the offending predator! On an esoteric side issue I am fascinated by the Mayan calendar and the soon to be astrological alignments which I think will have a bearing on our more mundane way of life. In fact, if you want a prediction, I think that celestial bodies and their gravitational and magnetic influences will soon become topics of interest, in much the same way global warming has, as we start to understand the universe better or maybe more accurately, start to feel their effects.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbys...-downgrade.html

Just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean you have nothing to fear! It is all about control and by a gov so out of control! I know it is excused by the term "security" but what exactly are we trying to protect. If our normal way of life is curtailed by these sorts of measures don't the terrorists win by default? As GGG says it has everything to do with the way remarks are interpreted and the people doing the interpreting!

Once again ironic timing , in a week when Gov are now legally able to read everyone's private e-mails the very same Gov are in trouble because of an e-mail!

Ah ha, now we know who writes those Obama speeches! Nice use of classic literary and oratory skills Sym! As for the other, sobriety refrains me from mentioning anyone who might have their lips GGG bound!

GGG, I wouldn’t have exactly baled them out but I would have taken them into state control once things had run its course. With considerable high street presence they could be used to deliver what is needed, and maybe one set for toxic assets, instead of all that cash disappearing into a black hole to maintain them in the private sector. You can’t allow them to all go bust, unless you advocate returning to a bartering system? The moral hazard is now the likes of NR, RBS etc repossessing houses and putting people on the streets, with government control now it is Gordo who is actually throwing these people out and refusing lines of credit for erstwhile profitable small companies while at the same time lending vast amounts overseas. It is a mess of his own doing. Darling’s budget is going to be a corker; I wonder how much he will admit to getting wrong even in the pre budget report a matter of months ago. Sym, I think your are mixing ‘metaphors’! I mentioned the corner shop brigade only by way of extolling their financial acumen as against the distinct lack shown by the treasury team. I think you will find GGG has Bedlington running through him like a stick of Blackpool rock! Monsta, I hope that is an ironic smiley!

But where is Sym going to buy his toffs rags? Are we only going to show individually in slight colour changes to the same shell suits? Speaking of shoes there is one thing which has baffled me (I know that’s easy monsta!) but where does the older generation buy their shoes, coz they all wear the same ones, and I have never seen them for sale anywhere? Maybe this shop had the market cornered and that was they it stayed open for so long?

I think if you walk into any corner shop up and down the country and ask the Asian gentleman there to run the country they will do a better job! They all show a much better understanding of economics, marketing, work ethic and supply and demand than any shown in government these days! I disagree GGG I would have baled out the banks but I would have let them go bust first and taken them over the next day thereby not honouring scandalous ex director’s golden handshakes. The economy would go on irrespective of where the money comes from, public or private sector, it doesn’t differentiate so why do we need to pour unlimited cash into it to keep it private? It now looks like billions have been wasted bolstering banking assets when the same cash could have been used to provide mortgages and investment capital which would produce domestic returns straightaway. I just don’t get why a government with this as a ‘stated aim’ didn’t have the bottle to actually do it? Anyway GGG get with the program the recession is all but over isn’t it, or is that just what we are led to believe?

You have a point monsta but if everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator don’t we loose choice?

Enhanced golden handshakes for the top brass of WDC! Had Bedders had some strong leadership about 2 million quid could have been ring fenced for investment into the area! I think it is a bit rich, politically speaking, for "Labour" to come out with headlines like this, although par for the course. This unitary authority was their protege even if they have now lost overall control due to the fickle electorate! Reading the verbal fisticuffs which have been going on in the letters page of the NPL recently anyone would think they had been against the idea instead of pushing it through. It has also been interesting to read about the financial benefits accrued by some in this new authority while others turned up for work only to be told they didn't have jobs anymore. The fact is that now all of our local assets are now under the direct control of a county wide authority and whilst we have always been in third place in the tripartite rat race within WDC, third place in the unitary authority will be a dream position for Bedders seeing as it is now split into several sections, thirtieth will be more like it!

Or not!

Sorry Mrsvic, I blame the mod! They have maybe pulled the vid as it is going to be used in a tv ad........

You saw it here first!!!!!!