Category: Wearside

It’s been a tough few months, but I feel a bit more like myself, and although the country is opening up again the only place I want to go is to the coast.

What the Cameron lobbying scandal tells us is that it’s time to say enough is enough, these people are effectively robbing us and it’s time to ditch them once and for all. Hearing from a friend of Cameron, George Eustace MP the Environment minister on Sky News that Cameron didn’t do anything wrong is like telling someone who mugged an old lady that they didn’t do anything wrong.

Jessie described her manifesto as a “manifesto of hope”. Her message is to those who are left-behind, who feel neglected and who need something better.

A sequel of sorts, So Cold Love continues the climactic story that previous track Blew Up a Kiss started, a progression the band were keen to explore and delve into as they grow and mature past their previous experiences.

“Jack be nimble. Jack be quick
Simple recipe, done in a tick!”

Northern working people and their families care deeply about where they live. Issues such as litter, fly-tipping, graffiti, burnt-out vehicles, dog fouling and street crime are at the top of every neighbourhood’s list of priorities. It’s a problem that doesn’t seem to resonate with a London-centric based national government. This is backed up by several […]

An estimated 56,000 people in the North East were living with Long Covid in the four-week period ending 6 March 2021, according to new ONS figures published this week. There are a total of 1.1 million people living with the condition across the UK.

“And I will ensure that the arts, culture and tourism are right at the heart of our revival. We have incredible talent here and we must harness that.

For individual young people, there are significant multiple ‘scaring’ effects associated with spending very long periods of time outside education and work. These include a loss of confidence and self-esteem; greater vulnerability to various limiting illnesses, including mental health problems; increased propensity to crime, and excessive use of drugs.

Arts Council England has announced 2,272 grants totalling £261,582,823 to arts organisations to help them recover from the ravages of the pandemic. Distribution across England w

The Billingham International Folklore Festival of World Dance (BIFF) has received a grant of £40,900 from the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund to help the organisation recover and reopen.

The award from the Culture Recovery Fund will make up a shortfall in income streams derived from Live Theatre’s social enterprises, forced to close as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This project will help to stimulate people’s minds at a time when the pandemic has greatly affected their wellbeing and mental health, and will be a welcome main course to appease their cultural appetite.”

New figures published today by the Department for Work and Pensions indicate that 37% of all children and young people across the North East were living in poverty in the three years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic (2017/18 to 2019/20) . This is equivalent to more than 11 children in a

Far right organisations like For Britain, led by Anne Marie Waters, are targeting the North East, especially Hartlepool, to stir up racial hatred and social unrest. MI5 and police have made the point that the threat posed by the extreme right in the north and elsewhere is greater now than at any other time since the 1930s.

. My local port of North Shields is England’s largest prawn exporting port, the main customers, accounting for the majority of the business, being France and Spain. In the past the prawns arrived in France from North Shields the following day guaranteeing their freshness. Now this takes three days which for a product with a fresh shelf life of five days is far from ideal. Because of the new system of export hubs the prawns actually travel north to Glasgow first and then begin the long journey to the south coast. The new paperwork (a non-tariff barrier for the Prime Minister’s information) is complex and if the goods are part of a larger consignment then they risk being held up because of any mistake, even a minor one, by any other of the exporters in the group. On arrival at the port of entry in the EU costly customs procedures begin. The overall effect of the Brexit deal, if these problems are not dealt with, are threatening to any business’ survival in a competitive market.

The horrific Sarah Everard murder has thrown female safety back into the spotlight on the same week the notorious ‘Policing Bill’s second reading was voted through. A bill which fails to tackle violence against women and girls. We all saw the horrifying scenes of the vigil held last Saturday at Clapham Common while the police tried to stop it. Thankfully today was nothing like that and people were given space to reflect on the reality of women’s safety in the UK today.

Julie Elliott, MP for Sunderland Central The Northern Culture All Party Parliamentary Group will launch its first Inquiry into what Northern Culture needs to rebuild, rebalance and recover. The Inquiry will shine a light on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Northern Culture and call for evidence from key voices and stakeholders across the […]

On 6 May 2021 there are a number of important elections taking place across the North East including elections to local councils, a Mayoral election in Tees Valley, a Police and Crime Commissioner election for Northumbria and a parliamentary by-election in Hartlepool. There is, however, a big issue in local elections with ‘turn-out’. In 2019 […]

The right to food is laid down in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25 and in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 27.  In 2012 the UN launched the goal of ‘zero global hunger’ by 2030 in recognition of the stark physical and mental health implications for […]

MWFC partnership Middlesbrough Women Football Club has teamed up with Teesside University to help support players from grassroots towards future footballing careers. The University currently runs a Football Association Girl’s Regional Talent Club (RTC), which helps to identify talented young players, while the University’s women’s football team currently competes in the second tier of the British […]

To some experts, the most troubling trend is the drop by up to 40 per cent in the number of ‘attainers’ – teenagers at college or sixth form who are mean to join the register prior to voting age. A generation is in danger of missing its first taste of democratic participation, and perhaps never acquiring the habit of voting. This year’s local, Mayoral and Police and Commissioner elections could have a major influence on young people. The outcome could impact on job prospects, apprenticeships, climate change and finding somewhere affordable to live.

My platform as Chair will be ‘Step by Step Towards Rejoin’. Nothing less than rejoining the European Union is either acceptable or practical as our ultimate goal. For Britain’s security, prosperity and influence as a nation we must be full participants in the world’s largest free-trade bloc that lies on our doorstep. But accomplishing this politically in the current climate must be achieved in stages. That is not to be tentative – as anti-Brexit parties and politicians have been over the last year – but to bring as many people as possible with us on this journey.

The Republicans weren’t just beaten by a superior presidential election campaign, but with a four-year grassroots fight to weaken their authority and prevent the Trump agenda from becoming law. With some adjustments we can copy their game plan.

Crucially we came up with the concept of ‘sheep made out of sheep’. I’d been going to craft shows for years and always picked up a random needle-felting kit but I’d never come across a kit that made a virtue out of the type of sheep being crafted from its very own wool. I knew very little about sheep despite my grandma having a farm full of them! The pandemic struck and I set to work researching sheep breeds, the qualities of their wool, and which would work together well in a collection.

“The Tories failed our steel workers before, they can’t be allowed to fail them again”

Tony Bird has been a firefighter for most of his life. He started work, aged 16, as a miner and soon after he followed in the footsteps of his own Grandad Joe, who was a Retained Firefighter at Chopwell Fire Station back in the 1950s and 60s. Chopwell is now the only retained fire station in Tyne and Wear.

The hashtag for this year’s International Women’s Day on 8 March is #ChooseToChallenge. This hashtag is also behind the rallying cry of a new campaign #NoToHassockfield which has been established in response to the announcement by the Home Office of the creation of an Immigration Detention and Removal Centre on the site of the notorious […]

I’m also pretty sure that Priti Patel & co have no knowledge of the rather long history of sanctuary in the holy places of Northumberland and Durham. And I think they can have no idea how many people in the North East belong to and support the modern Sanctuary organisations. These refuse to accept that people can be treated like trash and instead offer a warm welcome, in many very practical ways, to the large numbers of people being ‘settled’ here into temporary accommodation while they wait in anxiety for a decision on whether they can be ‘granted leave to remain’ and be allowed to become members of society here.

At an online meeting this weekend, residents expressed fears that the women, many of whom have fled from cruel and dangerous situations in their home countries, were to be locked up in ‘prison style’ conditions for 23 hours a day.