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“Manic ramblings of a paranoid fool.”

Category Archives: News & Comment

March 14, 2012 The future’s bright – the future’s dinosaurs

Middlesbrough town centre’s future as a shopping destination has received an eleventh-hour reprieve in the form of two exciting initiatives. The projects come at a time when the town’s failure to secure city status in its recent bid has disappointed many locals; the first is a ‘Portas Pilot’ town bid and the second, a proposal to introduce [...]

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January 26, 2012 International Students at Teesside University

Middlesbrough’s Teesside University has a student body of nearly 30,000. Of that number, more than 1,500 are international students. The ones we tend to notice are female but there is hushed talk of males. Sam Howitt and I wondered what on earth possesed them to study here, of all places, but realised quickly that such [...]

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January 23, 2012 Several Hundred Words About Money

In Britain, welfare amounts to over 30% of overall public spending. If we ignore the bail outs – and we should, because £1.2 trillion could have built schools on the moon – then that’s the single largest area of public expenditure; a provision to guarantee a basic standard of living for all those in financial [...]

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December 11, 2011 Three years of cuts and closures…

As I mentioned already, I intended on working my weird rant against non-recyclers into the last real work of the year – the vox pop assignment. However, the apathy of others and the growing realisation that I am just another hypocrite – three paychecks and some half decent head in a fast car away from turning [...]

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November 11, 2011 Insurrection Lite

Playing Devil’s Advocate to the English Riots   Three The August 2011 riots of England and Wales were perpetrated by mindless thugs hell-bent on violent assault, the destruction of property and opportunistic theft. The terror and anarchy that spread from the capital to other UK cities may have started as a peaceful protest against the [...]

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November 7, 2011 Middlesbrough – a City at Heart

Middlesbrough has today launched its bid to be Britain’s newest city. In 2010, the Government announced that a new city would be created as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations next year. Many locals feel that there’s a real chance that 2012 will prove to be third time lucky in its bid for official [...]

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November 4, 2011 Nanny and the State

Nora Saunders was born in 1926. Her daughter quips that in that time she’s buried three servicemen – succeeding where the nazis and North Koreans failed. My Nan used to be a real hard arse. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s seven years ago and soon after was put on the partially sighted list. Her second [...]

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November 3, 2011 Sir Stuart Bell. End of the Party?

We have been learning much about the right way an elected official should behave. Sir Stuart Bell, Labour MP for Middlesbrough since 1983, seems to be teaching by bad example; the polar opposite of what his constituents expect and deserve. Not only is Bell’s presence largely absent in the Houses of Parliament – his figures [...]

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October 27, 2011 TV Review: Hillsborough Disaster Debate

Inside Out, North West. BBC One, 19.30 Mon, 17 Oct 2011   There are a few news stories that I remember from my early childhood, events so huge that despite barely comprehending them I couldn’t fail to be moved by the public outcry. There were the strikes and riots synonymous with Thatcher’s Britain, together with atrocities [...]

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