Whinnies award

 

The Whinnies Community Garden in Sunniside was recently awarded a National Lottery grant of £20,000. Yesterday, there was an event to celebrate the lottery win, attended by the mayor. I was there as well but I also took the opportunity to look at the new transport-themed play area. The garden reopens to the public on 1st April.

Gateshead West Lib Dem branch meeting

 

We have been rearranging the branch structure of Gateshead Lib Dems so that we have an improved campaign machine ready to delivery gains in the local elections in 2026. So on Tuesday members from the west of Gateshead met at Blaydon Rugby Club to set up formally the new branch. Cllr Paul Elliott was elected as chair and Cllr Joe Sowerby was elected secretary. When Lib Dems meet in Gateshead there is the inevitable discussion about next year's local elections and our year-round campaigning.

The next meeting will be in early April.

Paul Elliott, the new chair of the Gateshead West branch.

Joe Elliott, writing down the minutes as the new branch secrtary.

Next meeting of Sunniside History Society

 

Richard Pears has given an number of presentations o the Sunniside History Society in recent years and I'm pleased to announce he is the speaker at our next meeting on Wednesday 2nd April at 7pm in Sunniside Social Club when he will be speaking on "The Fenwick's Four: Bewick, Hotspur, Marley and Thornton. All welcome.

Motions meeting

 

On Monday 11th March 2025, Gateshead Lib Dem council group met online for what we call our "Motions Meeting". This is held 10 days before a full council meeting and its purpose is to come up with motions for debate. The meeting agreed one motion, about council news releases. Next full council will be on 20th March. Watch this space.

Manifesto awayday

 

On Sunday 9th March, Gateshead Lib Dems held an awayday at Sunniside Club, in my home village. The aim was to produce the party's manifesto for the local elections in 2026. 30 councillors and key seat candidates attended. It was a successful day and by the end of it we had a second draft manifesto. Work will continue over the spring and summer on the manifesto and another awayday will be held in the autumn.

Lunch: the most important part of the day.

Focus delivery

 

The next Focus in Whickham has arrived. It is a joint Focus across the three Whickham wards. Delivery has already started. I was out on Thursday. I'll be back out this coming week.

Speaking at the History Society

 

On Wednesday last week, I gave my long awaited talk on the history of UK tv adverts to Sunniside History Society. It went down very well. There was a big demand to replay the Hamlet cigar photo booth advert from the late 1980s. The advertising industry has come a long way from the Gibbs SR advert (the first UK tv advert broadcast in 1955) and nowadays it is often the case that the adverts are more absorbing and amusing than the tv ads.

My next talk will be in May when I will give a presentation on the local locations that were important during the Second World War.

Discussing the local elections 2026

 

Last week the Gateshead Lib Dem exec meeting took place. A wide range of issues were discussed and agreed, chief among them being the local election campaign for next year. Obviously I am not going to write here what decisions were taken - I'm not in the habit of tipping off my Labour readers! Nevertheless, the campaign for the all-out elections next year is shaping up well.

Ron on the BBC

 

As Gateshead Lib Dems' communications officer, I was pleased that Lib Dem group Leader in Gateshead, Ron Beadle, was invited onto the BBC North East Politics Programme on Sunday 2nd March. Sadly, I was out checking on road signs in my ward at the same time so I missed him. No doubt he will be invited back in the future.

Give us a sign

 

With my two ward colleagues - Marilynn Ord and Jonathan Mohammed - we were out and above in Whickham on Sunday 2nd March checking on the state of street signs. It may not necessarily be the most exciting of tasks to do on a Sunday morning, but for Lib Dem councillors this is the bread and butter of community politics. We identified two signs that were in urgent need of replacing as the posts they were on had either rotten or corroded (depending on the materiel from which they are made). We are currently reporting them to highways officers.

Scrutinising the accounts

 

On Monday 3rd March 2025, I attended the meeting of Gateshead Council's corporate resources scrutiny committee. On the agenda (at Lib Dem request) were the accounts of the council-owned Regent Funeral Services and whether or not there had been a beneficial return to the council, despite the company's eight years of losses which anyone can read about in the company's accounts lodged with Company's House.

Council Leader Martin Gannon has publicly stated that the council has benefitted significantly from RFS as many of the services used by the company are bought from the council itself. We want this claim to be closely examined because the provision of these services comes at a cost to the council. We had something of a breakthrough on this however. I asked for a further report to come to the committee outlining the costs to the Council of providing each of the services used by the company. This was agreed by the committee. It means we can scrutinise the details and arrive at a figure for the actual net benefit to the authority. That should make for interesting reading.

Photo above: Chris Ord, Ian Patterson and Paul Elliott at Monday's scrutiny committee meeting. We have 5 members on this committee. Ron Beadle had to leave part way through the debate because of another commitment and I was behind the camera!

Ryton action day

 

On Saturday 1st March 2025, Gateshead Lib Dems held an action day in Ryton, Crookhill and Stella ward. Lib Dem Leader on Gateshead Council Ron Beadle joined with other members to help deliver a targeted survey and meet people outside the Coop. It was great to see Ione Rippeth, former councillor for Ryton, join us on the day.

Pictured: Ron Beadle, Steve Kelly, Jack Muers and Ione Rippeth.

Sunderland Lib Dem dinner

 

Last night (27th Feb 2025) I ventured to Sunderland to enjoy the delights of the Sunderland Lib Dem annual dinner at the Roma Italian Restaurant. I was placed next to the contingent from Newcastle which gave me the opportunity to quiz them about the disintegration of the ruling Labour group, which is now technically without a majority. The guest speaker was Lord John Shipley who spoke about housing and other local government related issues.

Meanwhile, I won 3 prizes in the raffle.

Printing

 

In 2024 we spent the first 10 months of the year on election footing. We had local elections in May necessitating the first 4 months of the year working on electioneering, then we had 2 weeks off before the general election was called. Then along came 2 council by-elections in September and October. It meant that I spend a large amount of time in the Lib Dem print room churning off an impressively enormous quantity of literature. In November we stood down from election footing status but the rest has not lasted long. I was back in the print room today printing 2000 survey forms. 

300 years of the Tanfield railway

 

Celebrations are taking place this year to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Tanfield Railway. Starting off as horse drawn on wooden rails in 1725, ably assisted in some areas by gravity, the railway carried coal from the northern Durham coalfield to the Tyne for export (much of it to London). Steam haulage and wrought iron tracks replaced timber and horses and the railway ran until 1964 when the last pit feeding into it (Watergate) closed. The Railway is now a tourist attraction as well as a reservoir of skilled labour and experts on maintaining steam railways.

Councillor Marilynn Ord and I paid them a visit on Sunday 23rd February 2025. Both of us had a great time. Well worth a visit.

Budget meeting

 

Gateshead's budget meeting was held on Thursday 20th February 2025. The Lib Dem group had met on the Monday before to decide whether to vote for, against or abstain. The budget itself was a standstill. In effect there were no cuts though the council still faces a deficit in the years ahead. The standstill however is only on the basis of a 4.99% rise in council tax. Had the Council not raised the council tax by this amount, the government would have taken away from Gateshead's grant the same amount that would otherwise have been raised had council tax been increased by the full 4.99%. That could have cost Gateshead £millions.

The picture is the same across England. In effect council tax rises have been nationalised and those councils that step out of line will be fined. It was interesting to note in neighbouring Co Durham, the opposition Labour party attacked the joint administration (led by a Lib Dem) for raising council tax by 4.99%. It seems no one in government had sent Durham Labour the memo on council tax! Just as an aside, Labour had previously run Co Durham for a century but lost in 2021. Labour expect to win in the May local elections but their antics suggest they are becoming comfortable with an opposition role. Meanwhile, back over the border in Gateshead, we are getting uncomfortable with the role of opposition. Officers of the council need to know that the Lib Dems are building up as an alternative administration ready to take power in 2026 and take the hard decisions. Hence our decision to vote for the budget.

Pictured above and below, the Lib Dem group at the budget meeting (I took the photo so that's why I'm not in it). The size of the group meant 2 photos were needed to get everyone in!

We need a bigger office

 

I took these photos in the opposition office on Thursday 20th February 2025, before the council budget meeting. As you can see, we are rather crowded. We were joined by a number of Lib Dem campaigners as well. SO we need to eye up bigger office space as we outgrow the opposition office. The Council Leader's suite of offices would be ideal for the growing Lib Dem group. It is potentially going spare in May 2026!

The TV adverts you thought you had forgotten

 

Robots selling mash, putting a tiger in your tank, Hamlet smoking Daleks and a Geordie woman casually borrowing £25K - I will be doing a talk on TV adverts from the past on Wednesday 5th March at Sunniside History Society at Sunniside Social Club. Come along and enjoy all those adverts you'd forgotten!