Canny lass

Hi Joe and welcome to the forum. It's your grandfather I recognise in the last picture. My brother wasn't born until 1928 (died 1963) so your grandfather would be 15 years older. That would fit in with the picture i have in my head of a man who occasionally came to our house in Netherton sometime in the fifties. My brother also used th Howard Arms as a regular drinking place. Possibly they knew each other from the pub. Did your grandfather play darts at all?. It was a big passion of my brother - darts team perhaps?

That's happened to me a few times HPW (lost the post before getting it posted). If you start writing again in the reply box it (what you'd already written) usually comes back.

Yes please! You'll find my e-mail on my profile.

Good link, Eggy. Some good tips as well - a couple of places I've never heard of but worth looking into. Ill be giving the sand boarding a miss though

Thanks Eggy. There's so much info on the web - much of it conflicting - that it's hard to know what's what. I'm hoping to find somebody with 'real-life experience to have a natter with before I fork out a lot of money.

Ah, yes! but was he there in April - or is this your subtle way of telling me to take a woolly coat and a sou'wester?

Peru! Anybody been there? What to see (apart from Machu Picchu which is the main reason for going)? Food, drink, weather in April? All information, tips and advice appreciated.

More than compensated for by the pre-Brexit exchange rate!

You must have missed my visit last year then!

Quite right, Vic. We can't have people raining on my parade can we. Subject closed.

There’s a simple cure for that. Don’t read it. I was asked for my opinion. I gave it. Nothing at all given that it appeared in the Telegraph, a right orientated publication, and was written by a supporter of the Conservative party. It ticks all the boxes. As you say yourself, he was “allegedly” there and “seems to be putting on a rather convincing act”.

Sweden's refugees, living in centres run by the immigration authority and with food provided have a legal right to: Single adult - 24 SEK per day Adult in a shared household - 19 SEK per day Child, up to 17 years - 12 SEK per day (applies only to the first two children) Child, up to 17 years (third and any subsequent children) - 6 SEK per day Refugees living in their own household and providing their own food: Single adult - 71 SEK per day Adult in a shared household - 61 SEK per day Children up to 3 years - 37 SEK per day Children 4-10 years - 43 SEK per day Children 11-17 years - 7 SEK per day (reduced by 50% for 3rd and subsequent children) NB. This allowance, in addition to food, should cover the costs of clothing, cleaning, hygiene, medical care and dental work as well as leisure time activities. Just to give you some idea of costs in Sweden my bill for food, hygiene and cleaning is 4 500 SEK for two adults for a month. (SEK is currently worth around 9.8 pence). That's roughly 75 SEK per day/person.

Depends on what you are hearing and from whom you are hearing it, Brian. If you are hearing/reading it via TV and newspapers then you should be aware of two things: TV companies and Newspaper groups are businesses just like any other business. They are in it to make money and don't stock goods that don't sell. They give the customer what they want. They are, more often than not, politically affiliated. For this reason the politically right orientated media will describe a situation in one way while the politically left orientated media will describe the same situation in another way. The reader/listener must decide for themselves which, if any, is telling the truth. This phenomenon is not unique to Sweden as countless research projects have shown. I am assuming that your question arises from the storm which erupted in response to an utterance made by President Donald Trump at a public meeting when he used Sweden as an example of how badly things can go when immigration is allowed causing crime figures - particularly rape - to soar. We hear this in Sweden too but only from the right orientated media. The left orientated media, on the other hand, paint a picture of a land of milk and honey with a welfare state, caring for one and all, that is second to none, and an equality of the sexes that abounds the length and bredth of this oblong land. The sad fact is that, according to me and others like me, neither is correct. Both are exaggerations. Sweden does not appear to me to be the Hell hole described by right wing media but equally it does not appear to be the paradise described by the left wing media. The reports are poles apart and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Newspapers and TV are, in my opinion, not the best places to gain information. If you want unbiased facts and figures about crime and immigration in Sweden then there are plenty of scientifically based reports available, spanning a near 50 year period of time, that deal specifically with this issue. Of course, being impartial and objective, they are usually very boring reading - not the sort of thing you peruse over a cuppa and a bacon butty. However, that doesn't answer your question. Can we believe all we hear about immigrants in Sweden? Is there an upsurge in the amount of crime and if so is immigration the cause of it? Do refugees live a life of luxury on huge amounts of benefits? Well, we know what the newspapers say. What do the experts say? Often seen on TV here is Jerzy Sarnecki, professor in Criminology at Stockholm University and with specialist competence in juvenile crime. According to him, immigrants and their children are overrepresented in crime statistics and the reasons for this are three: 1. Discrimination within the judicial system: There are more police patrols in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities and more frequent 'checks' on those with an obvious foreign background. These two factors alone increase the possibility that persons belonging to an ethnic minority will end up in some criminal register while, at the same time, reducing the risk for Swedes of Swedish origin. 2. Conditions and circumstances in their country of origin: Sarnecki's research has shown that there is a relationship between war and other atrocities in the home country and crimes of violence comitted by immigrants in Sweden but he couldn't find any support linking just cultural differences to overrepresentation in the crime statistics except in the case of crimes related to family honour. He frequently knocks holes in the popular theory that individuals from a certain country are more likely to commit crime than others. He can't find any support for that either with the exception of one group of immigrants - those from Finland who came here to work in the 70s and 80s, bringing with them their serious alcohol problems and the crimes related to it. Another group that appears to swell the immigrant crime figures is the league of criminals from the Baltic region who aren't immigrants at all - merely foreign born criminals who are here, temporarily, for the purpose of 'work'. 3. Living standards in Sweden It's a well documented fact that poverty, social isolation, low income and childhood cicumstances have a direct relationship to crime and immigrants usually have a foot in all of those camps so it's hardly surprising that they are overrepresented in the statistics. However if you look at other factors, such as the parent's education, profession and income, unemployment and social isolation then the difference between immigrants and non-immigrants can be halved. If I were to say that the immigration population in Sweden is not a problem then I would be misleading you. The last wave, because of its size, has stretched resources but not to the degree that your average Joe Toes is suffering any hardships. If I didn't help out with their language difficulties then I probably wouldn't know they were here. Sure, there are some Swedes who are unhappy, they are the ones who believe everything written by right wing media, however, there are also some refugees who are unhappy. They are the ones who believed everything written by the left wing media. Now, when they've been sitting around in migration centres with 24 SEK a day, socially isolated, without any meaningful occupation, missing their relatives and with loads of time on their hands to remember the atrocities they've suffered in their home country - it's hardly surprising that some of them turn to crime. Despite that, and the fact that Sweden has welcomed so many, crime figures for immigrants appear to be roughly the same as 40 years ago and foreign nationals have been overrepresented in crime statistics throughout that time. I've lived here for 30 years (I arrived towards the end of the Finnish immigration period) and during my time here immigration has taken many forms both with regard to country of origin and reason for immigration. Groups from Africa, particularly the northern area are generally more overrepresented in statistics related to suspicion of crime but funnily enough, according to Sarnecki, those who dominate among the persons suspected of crime are in fact Scandinavians! Individuals from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland who account for 5%. After all, they dominate the immigration figures in this country. I sometimes wonder if people reading about immigration in Sweden even consider the fact that most of Sweden's immigrants are blonde haired and blue eyed. By comparison can be mentioned that our North African immigrants account for only 0.7% of suspected criminal activity. Makes you wonder, doesn't it! I personally haven't noticed any differences in crime during my time here. Murders crop up now and then as they've always done. If there's any difference here then it's iin the weapon of choice. I get the impression that firearms are more often a part of the scene now than previously and that the victims are more often from an immigrant background than previosly. The past two years there appears, again according to me, to have been an increase in the number of cases of arson as migration centres have been burned down at a rate of knots. But this is only my opinion. Forgot to mention all the alleged rapes that were recently reported at music festivals around the country. Recent report - albeit on TV - says that in 88% of the of reported rape cases have now been closed.

Thanks merc.

Glad you like them! Don't forget to clean and hone a little after every use, particularly if you are using them on pine trees. The resin plays havoc with the sharpness. Bit of turps or an alcohol hand wipe gets rid of it nicely so that you don't get a build up. The latter is easy to have with you in your first aid kit - along with the elastoplasts.

Could have been Sweden at Christmas! Thanks Eggy! Actually, I think I recognise the lower picture. I knew the name was familiar. I think he was a friend of my late brother so his name has probably been heard a few times in my younger days - talking 50s here.

January 2 this year, on Bedlington Remembered, Ian Foster posted a picture taken in Bedlington Social Club 1974. One of the men is identified as Joe Steel. Could it be the same one?

Sorry to hear about the cat. Hope it wasn't any intentional sort of poisoning and that he recovers quickly.

Happy birthday youngun! Hope it's a good one.

That's very good! Just as I remember it!

Happy to have been able to help!

You are clearly a man of many talents! Nice drawings.

It'll be a big improvement on what we've got though Andy does make a fair point regarding to 'the cut'. I particularly like the idea of many small retail units - that their use is flexible gets a tick in the margin. I think it could encourage visitors to the area.

Any idea when he lived, Mercury? The name is familiar to me but maybe it's just something I've heard in my childhood.

Thanks HPW. A thowt it had been a bit quiet roond heor lately. Hope ya on the mend noo.