4th. Mouth of the Tyne Festival……
……..and the weekend round up
It looks like you all had a whale of a time here in South Shields on Saturday night as the Mouth of the Tyne Festival drew huge crowds to the sea front in South Shields to watch giant animated fire breathing dragons and spectacular fireworks, and thanks for sending in your pictures. (Some of them were dreadful guys, go out and get a new phone or a camera, you know!) Seriously, big thanks to those who sent pictures in I appreciate it very much, at least between us we have managed to cobble together a slide show to let the rest of the world know what they are missing at this time of year in South Shields.
I took Mrs. Curly and the kids camping near Ripon in North Yorkshire, the weather was dreadful on Friday night, torrential rain, but we managed to stay dry, unfortunately I hear that some were not so lucky in South Shields with properties in Mitford Road and the Grey Hen pub in Temple Park Road flooded. I hear that the pub weren’t allowed to sell any beer because the cellar was contaminated with sludge after the water went away (why didn’t they hose the sludge away?), so they resorted to buying in stocks of canned beers and lagers at around 50p each and flogged them for three times that amount! Well I guess they’d have to cover the costs of the clean up, unless they were insured against it. People in Mitford Road were inundated with flood water too, so just what was Northumbrian Water’s Olympic sized underground swimming pool at Brinkburn doing on Friday night? After all of those millions of pounds of our money invested, I’m dying to hear what reasons are given for the flooding. People on the Victoria Road estate in South Shields were also affected by flooding, the rain must have been bad here!
In other weekend developments it seems that The Chief Monkey/Whip can no longer be viewed on computers belonging to the estate of South Tyneside Borough Council either in the Town Hall or other offices, schools, colleges, internet cafes, councillors laptops etc. Censorship perhaps, but freedom of speech and expression carries the price of responsibility to go with it, but where posts are described as “close to the knuckle” does this not really mean possibly libellous? If so, one can hardly complain at the Council attempting to protect the interests of it’s own corporate reputation and that of individual members by restricting access. Banning notices do serve another purpose though, as the non conformist blogger alludes to in later posts.
In another development, which I will not blog too much about, the video which I linked to showing footage from CCTV cameras and which ought not to have been publicly available, is being viewed “as serious” by South Tyneside Council’s Leader Iain Malcolm and senior officers, therefore if it results in disciplinary action I shall refrain from mentioning it again until the process is complete. However, privacy of private data remains as a weight on my mind.
Anyway, after a warm Saturday and Sunday and a pleasant drive with the caravan pullers on the A1 yesterday, I managed to catch some of the entertainment at South Shields Sea Front, so look out for your pictures in this slide show featuring readers’ input. Remember if the music is “not your cup of tea” you can switch it off by hitting the loudspeaker icon. Enjoy the slide show!
Update 21:25
I just don’t know where the time has gone today I’ve been so busy, but it’s worth reporting, in respect of the video incident, that the release of the footage into the public domain is not connected in any way with South Tyneside Council or any of it’s employees, and it is subject to criminal proceedings.
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