There has been a bench next to the Kingsway/Sunniside Road junction in Sunniside for as long as I can remember. It wasn't in a great state but that problem has been resolved. Planting Up Whickham, the new group of volunteers aiming to plant up areas in Sunniside and keep the village looking good, has paid for the bench to be replaced. The work is now done.
We are now well into our next cycle of literature in Birtley ward. I was part of the team out in the ward yesterday. We shifted a significant quantity of both Focuses and letters. I was keeping my eyes peeled for literature from the other parties. I spotted nothing.I will be back on Tuesday as I still have 2 patches left to deliver. My shoes have not yet been worn out but I suspect I will need a
The next meeting of Sunniside History Society will be on Wednesday 3rd April at Sunniside Social Club (7pm). The speaker will be Geoff Purcell-Smith who will be speaking on Victorian social reformer Josephine Butler. All welcome.
Revealed: 31,000 sewage discharges into bathing areas last year Water firms committing "environmental cover up" as one in seven sewage monitors are faulty Khan quietly ditches 'Track My Crime' victim tool Revealed: 31,000 sewage discharges into bathing areas last year Sewage dumped average of 86 times a day last year into bathing water sites, up 47% on previous year Lib Dems warn families visiting seaside over Easter bank holiday will be "horrified" that popular beaches are being ruined by rise in sewage dumping Allonby in Cumbria the worst hit bathing site with 4,500 hours of sewage dumped last year The ...
Sun 31st
21:24
Spook-friendly intelligence firm courts Labour - and what it's got to do with this blog's hero Vaugh...
The current Private Eye brings news that the "spook-friendly" intelligence firm Hakluyt is helping build bridges between business and the Labour Party. In the last year or two it has hired Emily Benn from the party dynasty, former Labour minister Shriti Vadera and former Labour candidate Andrew Hilland. The last two were both close to Gordon Brown when he was at Number 10. Not only that, says the Eye. Hakluyt also invited Darren Jones to its "secretive" conference last year and helped to fund Peter Kyle's recent trip to California to meet tech bosses. The Eye reminds us that Hakluyt ...
This Transgender Day of Visibility, the message to trans people from the Lib Dems, and this site, is very much "we see you, we love you, we have your backs." For a community under daily attack in the media, it is vital that we stand with them. Our trans siblings are real live people with lives, ambitions, hopes, feelings and needs, not weapons in a right wing culture war. My trans loved ones are amongst the bravest people I know and I for one will not stand by and see them vilified and demonised. Wherever the attacks come from, I ...
Watch Ed Davey's Easter message below: We hope that all of our readers are having a lovely weekend, either celebrating with family or campaigning hard for the local elections.
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: I like averages. I use them, I calculate them and I can bore you with the pros and cons of mean versus median versus mode. Averages sound like they should be useful for understanding opinion polls... But... Find out more by reading this edition of The Week in Polls here, and you can sign up below to receive future editions direct to your email inbox:
Sun 31st
13:47The Easter service by the grave of William Hubbard at St Mary in Arden, Market Harborough
Every Easter Saturday, a short service is held at the grave of William Hubbard in the churchyard of St Mary in Arden. The small disused church stands near Market Harborough railway station. Hubbard died in 1786 and this ceremony has been held since 1807, so the old boy has got good vale for the guinea he left to pay for it. I suddenly remembered this service yesterday afternoon, so I went along to see it. There was a vicar, half a dozen women to sing, a man with a cross and I found myself one of a congregation of getting ...
What better for Easter Sunday than a song about resurrection? This is one of the pieces I played for my mother in her last weeks, so excuse me if I get a bit teary. I didn't play it to her for any theological reasons, but because she had always loved The Messiah and because Philippe Sly's voice is simply magnificent. Though it is interesting to be reminded by this that, for early Christians, there was nothing metaphorical about their expectations of bodily resurrection, A word too for the trumpeter here. Apparently, the baroque trumpet, which does not have valves like ...
Baltimore The Baltimore Bridge disaster was more than a fatal human tragedy. It was a commercial and trading disaster which starts in Baltimore and ripples well beyond American shores. But let's start with Baltimore and its immediate environs. When the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge it closed a major land and sea route in and out of a city which is one of America's most important as well as one of its most socially-deprived. The 1.6 mile long bridge crossed the Patapsco River which is the major sea channel in an out of the ...
The Independent reports that a company run by a major Tory donor and former party treasurer was handed lucrative government contracts to advise the Post Office. The paper says that Malik Karim, who has given the Conservatives £1.6m since 2014, won two major deals last year through his finance firm Fenchurch Advisory, which were worth £1.5m and £175,000 respectively. Documents uncovered by this publication show Fenchurch was handed the payments to offer the beleaguered Post Office "advice on banking services and the retail banking market". Critics complained that the contracts "smack of cronyism" and raised questions about how government contracts ...
We have recently received concerns about repairs needed at the Roseangle playpark. As one resident advised : "We were in Roseangle play park with my wee boy today, it is sadly in a bit of a state. The wee train's steering wheel and seat is gone, the zipline is broken again and a lot of the barriers around the swings are damaged. I hope it can be fixed before the good weather is here, it would be great having every toy available for the kids to play with." We raised this with the City Council's environment management and have received ...
