Steve

Speaking to people in our area, There's been zero improvement in YEARS - Though plenty that has gotten worse! It's like labour have purposely held us back. Labour will blame it on money, yet we have the sixth highest council tax in the country! (Higher even than Kensington - London!) Time to get rid of lavery and get someone in who listens and cares about Wansbeck. The LD are finished in the UK. The tories have no chance up here. Labour have failed us and held us back year after year... after year! Reading the manifestos, there's only one that makes sense. (it's on http://ukip.wansbeck.org ) I know where my vote is going

I just tried accessing it via html5 mjpeg port 81 but got no joy.. ah well.. Unfortunately my cams use proprietoary sw and I've had no joy pulling mjpeg from em with anything but their own software Working extremely well for mjpeg. Many years ago I used to stream using the vp6 protocol (was up to vp8 last time I looked).. Worked very well, but had to install codec to view in browser. btw, java etc disabled on here and still your stream shows up excellent. Agree with others, looks extremely busy up there! Nicely done, a welcome addition to the site.

Done extremely well Impressed that no need to install plugins etc etc... be interested in how this is working, HTML5? open source or? Very well done

Also agree, I come across people weekly in my own line of work they've 'recently' gotten a degree - and to be honest, their lack of skill is astonishing. I don't think this was the case 15-20 years ago, but then I'm not old enough to know Having qualifications can maybe help you get an interview (sometimes even a career), but in reality at present, REAL knowledge and ability far outweigh the 'paper' and is another thing entirely.

I'm getting good at reviving old topics Careful what you store on USB sticks - We regularly have customers who rely on them for backup/storage of schoolwork etc - The drive goes bad and files are often corrupt. We recover data from real harddrives with a 95% success rate, but from USB you're talking 40-50%. Don't rely on them! Same can be said of SSD (Solid State Drives) - While nice and fast - I'm using one now, we've seen a *very* high failure rate. threegee: I'm assuming your 'other' OS is linux - multiple writes to these drives sugnificantly impact their lifetime, be sure to disable any swap partition (or file in some cases). You can do this in /etc/fstab. there are some other pointers on mounted partitions like -noatime that you could also look into. (and beware of log files that have regular writes). Anyone using USB sticks for backup - honestly, get an external HDD, but don't even rely on that 100% - Don't want you losing all those family photos!

As I write this, we've had road works and 'temporary' traffic ligts on Stakeford Road (Welywn Bridge) for over three weeks, yet no sign of ANY work getting done. This seems commonplace in the North East, it causes congestion, inconvenience, and the distraction is a danger, it's only a matter of tie before it causes an accident. Other counties manage to get such works done within 48 hours - why can't ours? Same is true of the A19 northbound, roadworks for around 6 months now, construction traffic at the side of the road, speed limit reduced to 50, yet no sign of any actual works? I've contacted local councilor regarding the Stakeford Road situation, but feel it's going to take a lot more to get our council to start working effectively on such matters. I find it odd that we pay one of the highest council taxes in the country - Higher even than London, yet situations like the above are commonplace locally. Contact for your local councillor/MP in the directory section (at the top of page) of this site.

Apple have always been way behind when it comes to technology, I was amazed that they started putting i7's in some of their latest offerings - So on that front they're starting to realise. The one thing they do do well, is design, Apple gear is 'sexy'.. but you pay 3 times the price for the hardware to get that 'sexy' look. They're also designing their stuff so it's difficult to repair, and quite often some major design problems, a tactic I've seen other companies do in the past. My take on that is their attitude to customers is: 'You were stupid enough to pay a premium for our 'name' - therefore you'll be stupid enough to do it again'. I laugh when I'm showing my android stuff to Apple fans - 'I wonder if mine can do that' - The answer.... Usually no. 'Look @ ME - I've got an apple' - poor sods, lol

Lot of the problem is lack of discipline. Good teachers are leaving, as there are so many untuly kids left to run amock. A teacher does so much as raising their voice to try to control a situation and find themselves 'investigated'. Parents too have been afraid to discipline their children, Kids often don't even know right from wrong these days. Those kids grow up, find that they don't fit in in the real working world and become depressed at their own situation. Some of the kids brought up under the above method are now parents themselves and have never known a world where kids behave, and have NO idea how to bring kids up properly themselves. Yeah it can be tough growing up, but all this softly softly approach is destroying lives.

So we've moved from 'selling up and getting out' to the state of UK education and job seeking. Education in Britain has been dulled down massively in my opinion, the core subjects (which help in all other subjects) seem to have all but disappeared. Agree that technology has made people lazy, and that there are many (I'll not mention then ) 'pointless' courses at all levels. Education needs a HUGE overhaul, teachers need real qualifications, and kids need to be taught 'how to learn' - Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I LOVE to learn new things - it's a feel good thing too, something the youth of today seems to sadly not know. Jobcentres etc, it really is just a tick box mentality, around 5 years ago I had reason to visit one for my own personal reasons, I never went back - but I did mail them a letter offering advice and an offer of my services, as the whole experience was SO un-organised it was ridiculous. It made me feel sick that our taxes are spent on these useless places. I've since heard many horror stories of these places.. threegee: you're right about all the 'job protection crap' - Red tape has made it dangerous for employers to take a chance on people. I know of at least one employer who employed someone with the above mentioned 'education'/degrees.. They couldn't do the job, didn't have a clue - they may as well have bought their qualifications from ebay. Add to that the fact that the employee was supposedly disabled... His hands were pretty much tied and it cost a fortune to all sort out in the end. Giving someone a chance as you put it, is beneficial both to the employee and the employer, but red tape and crazy HR rules have made it too dangerous.

Not a photo, but a video - day the powerstation came down. Sad day me thinks, whether by plane or by land, you knew you were almost home when you saw the chimneys.. I may have some other footage from a little while before taken from the air - but those I'll have to hunt out.. And yeah, I know, I should have gotten a tripod - but cameras were pricey back then! http://timerider.co.uk/download/power.mpg Feel free to take a copy, someone somewhere should be keeping an archive of such things.

Wonder how much it would cost US to fix the same potholes ourselves (if we had the equipment at hand - as they do (assuming they given it away to pals!)) I'm guessing 20% of what NCC say it costs? We'd probably then source the correct materials and fix em properly! Think I'll select a nice one, report it (or get a friend to so they don't try fiddling it), then put in a FOI request as to the cost - I'll let you guys know what they come back with see whether it's value for money, or...

Different rules for North of the border too.. Every kid deserves the chance at a decent education, and shouldn't be out of pocket for pursuing it. Again where all the money goes I have no idea - it seems we get the funding, but then it just vanishes! Personally I'd like to see further education for those capable funded from our high taxes, rather than people worrying how (or if) they'll pay it back. Currently there are a HUGE percentage of kids in the North East leaving school with NO qualifications (I'm certain it's over 30%, - perhaps even double that!) - Something somewhere up here is failing us miserably. These kids are OUR future.

It's now 2014... and interestingly, I reported a whole bunch of potholes at the beginning of the year - Bedlington and Blyth mainly.. (getting quite sick of our council tax rises and NOTHING in return) I actually got a call from a nice guy 'repairing' them, and the Bedlington ones I reported did get filled in.. The ones in Blyth - well, 0% of those have been repaired! (The call incidentally is on my youtube channel). Unfortunately, some 6 months later, the state of the filled in holes is pretty bad, it seems they're filling them with gravel, stamping it in by foot or something.. The gravel is now coming away, and come the winter I'm sure they'll blame cold weather. Once upon a time roads were resurfaced properly, and they lasted longer than 6 months. Quite who choosed the method and materials for the repairs I don't know, but they should be made accountable. Surely it would be more cost effective to repair things properly instead of just a temporary repair? After all, we have one of the highest council taxes in the UK. I urge everyone to get *something* for their council tax and report these problems, insisting that they get repaired properly. Report them here: http://www.fixmystreet.com

No Tony, I get ya, and you're right, Immigration isn't a problem in Bedlington, but allowed to continue without any controls, we know how it's affected other areas of the UK, but that's another topic.. My point was that if we shipped over NCC to Eastern Europe, we'd save a fortune and see improvement and prosperity return to the area! You're right that qualifications don't matter, especially for NCC higher levels, or for MP's..Certainly there, it's 'jobs for the boys' - has been for a way too long, hence the area is stuck well below national levels.

Sound ecomomic reasoning is something they wouldn't understand. By their reasoning, if you need to save money, you buy a new headquarters! (Maybe I should buy a mansion and save some money? ) These people need to be held to account, you can't make that many bad decisions by accident. They get more money, yet we get less service. Tonyp, instead of twinning with those countries, a better idea would be to send NCC over there.

Bedlington still has a lot to offer, but there are improvements that could be made, also, at least the town isn't full of bookies and charity shops like some I could mention! A lack of facilities is commonplace throughout Labour controlled Northumberland, and yet we have one of the highest council tax bills in the entire country. They even increased our bills this year, instead of freezing the bill and collecting the government funding - they'd rather hit the local people. With the amount of money that NCC fleece from us, our streets should be paved with gold, where the money goes I'd love to know?