This is getting rather rambling and deserves a rebuild. At present I am not very motivated to do it. I've been thinking about Identity Cards. Lower down it probably still says quite a bit about the police. Not very long ago - less than six months - I was stopped by a Community Warden in Lord street for a 'Person Check'. It was the middle of the day and I suspect he stopped me because he had just seen me emerge from Zetland Park. Probably lower down here is some stuff about my friend Tanya. Back in 2002 she changed her name from Robertson to Nelson. She probably did it because she is the illegitimate daughter of somebody who used to be an telly quite a lot - to be precise the lady who used to stand outside Sellafield Visitor Centre and say 'An no ar'm nor an actress. This is ma job'. I happen to believe that that lady's brother is a senior police officer - probably now retired. On the one hand I'm faced with 'Tarnya is dead' from the police The implication being Tanya Robertson is dead. Your friend is Tanya Nelson and because you still see her as Tanya Robertson we are getting a restraining order to prevent you contacting her because we're not going over all the new identity malarkey again, and on the other hand I am faced with a government which says that in transition trans sexuals can have two identity cards - one in either gender. The questions is are we allowed to have multiple identities just so long as they are all 'official?

February 2006 has been quite quiet on the web sites. This is probably due to everybody watching the Winter Olympics. Whilst I have been watching the Olympics I have noted that Carisma is moving. Less than twenty years ago Halfords moved out of Redcar. Their shop in France Street was taken over by a pound shop - now opposite W H Smith. Now a 'locally owned' 'car bling' shop is moving into the old Halfords shop.

Also, Macdonalds is closing - on the High Street not in Wellford Road - it's not Wellford Road it just should be because it's opposite where Wellford's Bakery used to be and is now Kwik Fit and the carpet Warehouse. hey they don't pay me I don't get their name right.

There was a time when Redcar wanted 'national Brands' but now it appears to be a bit too specialist a market - don't tell the remaining Labour Councilors 'too up market' for the 'This could be anywhere' shop fitters.

If I were offered an opportunity to plan a next phase of regeneration for Redcar I would concentrate on on strip through the town defined east and west by Red Lion Street - Bath Street and France Street Moor Street.

That's between - but not including -Wilkinson's and B&M. Full strip north south right across town. I propose that much of that area be demolished as with Regent Walk and that essentially a new market square for the town, including in particular a new bus station, be established where the charity shops currently cut the 'Old' police office off from the High Street precinct.

In particular I would like the comprehensive development to pay for 1 a new bus station in France Street and 2 the removal of the Lifeboat Station from Moor Street to Leo's Bar on the beach.

As at Thursday morning - 5th January - ITV Teletext Local Tyne Tees news page 334 Consent is selling off Belle Vue Sports centre to have a Olympic standard swimming pool built on the Steel Works site by 2012. Does that ring any bells with my suggestion that Persimmon Homes be offered a swap of the Eston baths site for the Coatham Enclosure site. Build the homes on a housing estate and build a decent swimming baths on the Esplanade at Redcar.

On New Year's Day I did a number of symbolic New Year things including a slightly different 'walkabout' in the area. The two main places I visited were Longbeck Trading Estate in Marske and Kirkleatham Business Park. I am the person who is willing to look foolish by stating the bleedin' obvious even when it's wrong.... but. How the hell could Redcar & Cleveland Council have any project with a higher priority than using its compulsory purchase powers to buy up Longbeck Trading Estate and sell it to Sainsbury's for a hypermarket. Cummon guys! Nothing in the area is a bigger mess/violation of zoning concepts. I know the estate could be a hive of activity on a trading day but that activity looks like it could easily be re-located to Kirkleatham Business Park, Warrenby, and South Bank. My sister lives on the Surrey - Hampshire border and so she lives very close to Odiham. One day I will discover why rig 28 from Odiham is drilling well No 4 on Kirkleatham Business Park but I'll probably never know why the operation is being supervised by Dorset County Council.

I really do feel very out of touch, out of step with my local community - especially when it comes to the issue of drains. Drains are not sewers. Things put into sewers usually end up in a swage works. Yesterday I pointed out to a park keeper that there was an oil slick in the inlet channel of Locke Park Lake. This will have been caused because somebody quite local has decided to change the oil in a vehicle engine and dispose of the waste oil rather as they have been show that the police dispose of confiscated alcohol - pour it down the drain. You pour it down here and it fetches up over there where the ducks can swim in it. Oh how long is it since I was a Friend of Locke Park? If I were a friend of Locke Park I would provide the park keepers with oil spillage clean up kits.And I'd expect press coverage of them being used.

T'is the season to be merry. Well, I'm not about to pretend that all is well with me but despite the fact that I am the only 'person' alive in this picture I'm not being morbid by remembering times past.

This is my graduation picture as arranged by my mam. This is Richard and his mum and dad and his dog, Haidee.

Happy Holidays.

In between watching X factor last night I watched a good deal of Good Will Hunting. I found - as one des in re watching old movies - something new. The shrink - the Robin Williams character - said something about the love story that I had missed before. I recognise Tanya and myself as the main protagonists but I'm not sure that it isn't the case that in many ways the gender roles are reversed. I mean I've self financed a lot of my studies from inherited money and it's Tanya who had the rough upbringing. The thing I missed before was the core second half theme of You find somebody who is perfect and then you avoid contact with them for fear that they are not as perfect as you suspect. Tanya isn't perfect, she's a snitch, a jobsworth. She has an excuse. She doesn't have family and friends to confide in so she confides in authority figures. That puts her at peril of a charge of wasting police time. There is a risk that somebody 'from a police family' will misdirect police resources to carry out investigations which either should not happen or should be carried out by a private investigator. I think too many people have seen this movie and are too quick to cast me as Will Hunting.

So the current state of play is that Sean Price chose the day Mo Mowlam died to have my house raided because Janice Webster a senior figure in the University of Teesside had fixed it for him to be awarded an undeserved Queen's Police Medal  in return for running Durham graduates out of town. This rather fits with the University of Teesside's switch - unexplained? - from Leon Brittan to Tom Sawyer as Chancellor. There is a kind of monolithomania if such a word exists about Teesside's chattering classes. Steel? British Steel, or Dorman's or Coruus but never more that one company at a time. Shipbuilding Swan Hunter. They're having none of Wilton International and its Huntsman and Union Carbide and BASF and that. If it's chemicals it must be ICI. If it's call centers it must be Gowlands and if it's university it must be The University of Teesside and if its the University of Teesside it must be Foundation Degrees. So perhaps apologies are in order to the Prime Minister. Perhaps Sean Price is merely in the pocket of the local poly (aspiring to be an FE college).

This plan to become an academic clearly pre-dates Ms. Baird's selection for Redcar in 2001. Being MP for Redcar is clearly getting in the way of these plans.

News Releases

MP becomes a time traveller

22 October 2004

The University of Teesside enrolled a special student when Redcar Member of Parliament Vera Baird signed up to study a Masters in Local History.

Mrs Baird, who became the Redcar MP in the 2001 election, is a qualified lawyer and the Vice-Chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers and serves on the Joint Committee for Human Rights. She is also leading a Home Office funded team to monitor gender impact of all criminal justice proposals and legislation and has written extensively on women's issues.

Mrs Baird said: “This is really the University of Teesside at its best. I began an MA at a London university in 2000 in Modern Women's History, but since becoming an MP I was to busy to continue with it.

“I really wanted to pick up where I left off and contacted the University of Teesside, who were very helpful. The course tutors, Barry Doyle and Tony Pollard, went out of their way to help and are very understanding about the fact I need to be flexible in my studies. The words ‘access' and ‘opportunity' spring to mind.

“I'll spend most Sunday's studying, with the rest of the week taken up with my Constituency and Parliamentary work. I'll be very busy, but I'm confident I can balance my life, work and study.”

Vera, who has spoken at several University of Teesside conference on women's issues, will carry out a dissertation project focusing on the almost unknown history of the region's suffragettes.

The fact that 'Tanya Nelson's' police statement of complaint so clearly reflects not her but her boss Janice Webster's preoccupations bears analysis. Tanya nelson was a sales engineer - although not necessarily under that exact title - for Virtual Reality at Teesside Ltd and her boss Janice Webster was managing director of VRAT Ltd a spin off company within the University of Teesside. Miss Nelson being a policeman's daughter had strong connections with the police and had just completed the official police Virtual Reality reconstruction of the Great Heck - Selby - train crash. Thus Miss nelson was a valued employee of Mrs.. Webster. Mrs. Webster had several causes for concern. 1 I may team up with Tanya's and oust Mrs Webster from her job. 2 I may poach Miss Nelson away from Mrs. Webster's company to either have her work with or for me. 3 I may poach Miss Nelson away from Mrs Webster's company to work with me at the University of Durham. 4 I may poach Miss nelson away to make babies for me. many of these items are mentioned in Miss Nelson's statement. Two possibilities present themselves. 1 Miss Nelson was blackmailed into making her statement of complaint. 2 Mrs Webster impersonated Miss nelson to Pc Hinchcliffe and made and signed a statement as Miss Nelson because I have never contacted Mrs Webster and could ot have harrassed her despite being a professional 'threat' to her in her own mind.

The best way to describe Sean Price's approach to policing the Cleveland police area is: I've got a goon Squad and I'm gonna use it. He is simply saying, I don't care about what is the most professional way to police Teesside and I will find people who will support me in my determination to police Cleveland in the way the un retired and un dismissed officers I have got are capable of doing it. I will tailor the service to current staff capabilities. You can wait ten or twenty years for inward investment while I get my Rent-a-Thug mob quietly reassigned to the golf course.

I am seriously concerned that Cleveland Police have infiltrated The University of Teesside on a mission to dumb it down by selectively victimising and excluding especially those computer experts who once placed The University in the top ten best places in the country to work with computers. This is state sponsored Ludism in the guise of child protection.

I have come in for some criticism for taking an interest in my MP's CV - career history - so far as I am concerned it does not amount to harassment to note from public sources - such as her own web sites on the Internet - that she went to a Girls' grammar School. Some people have recently suggested that grammar schools be re-introduced and an important element in the case for doing this is exemplified by the recent case of a group of girls beating up on another girl shortly after she was presented with an award for academic achievement. I want to suggest the opposite as a reason for not returning to selection. Selection makes school life more tranquil but it sows seed for conflict in adult life. Comprehensive education was introduced in North East England around the mid 1970s. This means that most police officers in North East England who are in senior ranks - are over 45 in 2005 - went to Modern Schools where the grammar school kids were absent. This has meant that they have little or no experience of dealing with their intellectual and academic betters and routinely in their 'professional' life write off anybody with negotiating skills as a 'nutter'. When I say that the North East will have to wait a decade or two for inward investment I mean that it will take that long for a regulatory infrastructure which accounts for intellect, knowledge and skills to take hold - it will take that long for the County Modern Set within the police to be redeployed to the golf course. It appears to me that there are only a small number of officers involved but that the authorities having seen the trouble there was over Mr Mallon would like to see a very large police authority which would have the financial resources to buy them off rather than discipline them.

In summary, I suggest that the reason that my home was raided on the day Mo Mowlam died was that I had been chair of The Friends of the Earth Teesside Project - Impact - at the time of my original arrest and it was thought that with Mo dead I would loose some sort of protection I had had as a fellow graduate of Durham University. It is important to say - in view of the above - that Mo would have been one of the few Labour Cabinet Ministers to have attended a Comprehensive school and got a grip on the minds and lives of 'ordinary people' which made her such a threat to Champagne Socialists.

I think it is an extra-ordinary suggestion that Ms. Baird - who has represented Greenpeace in her past - just because she has voiced some unease over wind farms would be willing to participate in a frame up of a local Friends of the Earth representative.

You probably know that I was arrested on 19th August 2005. I think I've told most people that P S McCartney arrived at my house on 18th August to arrest me. I' need a distance of time to put things into perspective. The point in perspective is that Ms. Baird's predecessor as MP for Redcar died I should say expectedly between P S McCartney's two visits to my house on 18th and 19th. A crackdown on Mowlam loyalists at a moment of tension? I don't really think I qualify but I had pointed out that Mo and I were both graduates of Durham university and so I felt some loyalty to her I did not extend to Ms. Baird.

I suspect that Ms. Baird knows that in May 2005 a lot of people voted for her because they did not want to upset Mo but would never vote for her again once Mo was really gone

DELLA CANNINGS

CHIEF CONSTABLE

NORTH YORKSHIRE POLICE

Della Canings is a modernising Chief Constable. Since her appointment as Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police in October 2002 there has been a marked step change in performance and a major modernisation programme commenced.

Della was born in Exeter, Devon and educated at the Bishop Blackall Grammar School and subsequently graduated from the University of Bath in mathematical studies.

In 1975 she joined the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary as a graduate entrant. She attended the Police Staff College in 1997 on the 17th Special Course as Sergeant and the Strategic Command Course in 1999 as a Chief Superintendent.

Della has a strong operational base including being a hostage negotiator, silver firearms commander, dealing with public order incidents, culminating in the command of the total eclipse in 1999 with enormous resources (including military) to deploy across both Devon and Cornwall.

Della has also been involved in strategic development issues and has received Home Office funding for two projects: the use of lap top computers and the policing implications of the Single European Act 1992. For the latter she received an award from Ernst and Young, as well as, a Chief Constable's Commendation. She has travelled extensively giving presentations to police and criminological conferences, most recently in Iran, the Basque and Catalan regions of Spain, Hungary, Cyprus and Italy. In the early 1980s she went to the USA for 15 months as a Harkness Fellow and studied the police response to domestic violence. From 1993 to 1995 she was a Senior Police Adviser at the Home Office Police Research Group.

In 2000, Della was appointed Assistant Chief Constable of Cleveland Police. Her portfolio she described as 'running the business of Cleveland Police' and included strategic development, performance management, personnel and development, legal and business services, finance and commissioning, information communications and technology, the force change programme and professional standards, as well as, on-call Command Team cover. Della held responsibility for the disciplinary aspects of the long running Operation Lancet relating to corruption in the police service. She was ACC (Designate) from May 2001 and Acting Deputy Chief Constable from 1 January 2002.

Until recently, Della Cannings held the ACPO portfolio on Safer and Healthier Policing and, from April 2004 is ACPO lead for the national Airwave Programme. She is also a member of the Institute of Directors and chairman of the North Yorkshire Prince's Trust Board.

In her spare time she enjoys gardening, walking, bird-watching (not twitching), travelling and spending time with her husband - Michael Baker - and their Springer Spaniel, Scrumpy. Della has also recently bought a cottage in North Yorkshire and is enjoying spending time project managing its renovation.

Della polices the largest county in England with over 2,500 staff dealing with the policing challenges such a diverse mix of communities and countryside provide.

Scunthorpe has not more right to be the last place in England making steel than does Consett.

I've been having a think. I've been thinking, I've been arrested twice and David Blunkett has been sacked twice. Somebody isn't learning their lessons.

Sean Price is 'from' Nottinghamshire' . There is a cabal of South Yorkshire MPs who perhaps think that steel should be made in Scunthorpe and processed in Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield. Putting a Spring Healed jack of of cop from the nearby Nottinghamshire coalfield may be a way to ensure that Teesside - and Redcar steelworks in particular - slip quietly into oblivion.

It ain't never gonna happen. No mater how hard the likes of Sean Price try to suppress the natives and frighten off inward investors, Redcar will be the last man standing - the last place in England where bulk steel is made.

Locke Park Lake is full again.

It wasn't fully open to the public by the end of the half term break but perhaps it soon will be.

Things have changed. The water level in the lake will from now on normally be around a foot lower because a notch has been cut in the outflow weir.

This should mean that the paths around the park drain better.

Common sense is the layer of prejudice laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen." A. Einstein .

I guess i have a couple of points to make about Police Authority re-orgainisation. Large Police Authorities will be able to have Professional management which will be able to depend on national professional support in the face of the obsessions and distractions of perhaps clinically mentally ill individual complainants - especially local MPs.

Second, Should Cleveland police be split between the 'All of the North East' Police Authorty and the 'All of Yorkshire' Police Authority. Is Redcar and Cleveland in Yorkshire?

The Times newspaper rates Nottingham University as almost as good as Durham University so how come Sean Price can arrive on teesside and never have heard of universities? Comes here reckoning to break eggs with a stick. Comes here expecting to dominate the local community from the seat of the Chief Constable. Got another little Mallon 'ere aven't we. Will be be standing for Elected Mayor of Hartlepool if his role as Chief Constable of Cleveland is made redundant?

Teesside isn't The Isle of Uist. The local copper isn't the only literate inhabitant and no wonder the police run out of money when they seek to do all manner of things a police service isn't funded to do because it isn't expected to do them.

I suspect Sean Price should watch a bit more of the movie The Wicker Man and less of TV shows such as Morse and The Bill.

Well , there must be a Labour government because we have new annual statistics on police performance and they aren't calculated on the same basis as last year's.

Lies , damned lies, and statistics... No NEW Labour They tell the truth. They tell you loads and loads of the truth but never anything concrete that would be the basis of long term analysis..

What I do note is that Sean Price came to be Chief Constable of Cleveland from being assistant chief at Nottinghamshire and Nottinghamshire is still one of the five worst performing police authorities in the country. So Question one Why recruit a new chief from a failing force? Question 2.If - and it's a big if - If Cleveland is improving and Nottinghamshire isn't, did Cleveland Police Authority recruit a better chief than they intended?

So there I was - in 2003 - with the Teesside Establishment suddenly waking up to the fact that I was quite popular in Redcar and I wasn't a Labour Hack. So at just what level was it decided that it was an embarrassment to the Teesside Establishment that a popular public figure was not labour and was the best friend - beloved - of the niece of a former Assistant Chief Constable? I lot of store was but by the conspiracy to persuade whoever that I was deluded about having a relationship with somebody so ? so high profile. I think it should be remembered that this conspiracy - and the appointment of Sean Price as Chief Constable - pre-dated by around three months the local government elections which ousted Labour from control of Redcar & Cleveland Council. Perhaps some people 'soldiered on' with the plot anticipating a recount or rematch in the short term. That can't be the explanation for my re-arrest on 19th August 2005 shortly after I expressed further criticism of Cleveland Police.It's police harassment. It's police declining accountability and fudged statistics and a Queen's Police Medal fall into the same category as the unelected mum of the former Secretary of State for Health deciding to fudge the anti-smoking laws. This government is run by wives and mothers of Old labour MPs and not by Blair Babes.. Innit.

What I'm saying is that Cleveland Police's harassment is not party political because I have been arrested twice, once under a Labour Council and then again under an anti-labour council. Unless... Unless well both arrests occurred under a Labour Government but why should national government give a toss about a bit of mild justified criticism of the local police?

When people say to me that people on Teesside are entitled to a quiet life what is really mean is that a new chief constable has arrived from Nottinghamshire and he intends using agricultural methods of ploicing - brute force and ignorance.

OK OK let's have the full Robertson back story. I think it's Whitehaven in the mid 1960s and Mr. and Mr s.. Robertson have at least two children Jean and William. Before she leaves school Jean gets pregnant, perhaps to some smarter than average copper, perhaps to the son of an engineer building Windscale. This being pre abortion act Jean keeps the baby Tanya. Later William becomes a police officer, perhaps following in his father's footsteps. He marries an air head Job Centre worker called Denise. At 18 Tanya goes to The City University in London and meets me. Two years later I get very ill and inherit a house in Redcar and having been required to leave my course I retire to my home in Redcar leaving Tanya alone in London but in the care of a bunch of Irish Catholics - including brother and sister John and Geralyn Meyler - who had spent the past two years keeping my hands off her anyway. After six months 90 % flat on my back I perk up and enroll on an HNC in Computer Science at Teesside Polytechnic. After a couple of years on that my tutor tells me the poly needs somebody to teach the computer module on the HNC chemistry course and I accept the job. Meanwhile, Tanya's uncle Bill has fetched up as some sort of assistant chief constable in Cleveland Police. Along with that comes his wife Auntie Denise getting a job as an executive officer at Redcar Job Centre and becoming my employment advisor .... So one day I takes my pay slip in to Denise to declare my part time earning and she chooses to treat this as a confession to working and claiming rather than declaring income. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me the news that I teach at Teesside Polytechnic has spread and Tanya enrolls on a design degree course at Teesside Polytechnic. Further meanwhile a new personnel officer arrives at the Polytechnic from Glasgow and declares that she is going to adjust the gender balance of the teaching staff - i.e. no more males to be appointed and so I don't get 1 any more work let alone any extra hours, 2 funding to do a masters. Some time later William Robertson takes off to Inverness with his wife Denise and Tanya's cousins. leaving her alone again - this time without the gaggle of Roman Catholic minders. So in some ways we could say that this is all down to Denise feeling that her girls should 'do better' than Tanya because they are respectable - as in not illegitimate...

Denise reported me for working and claiming but the investigating officer - within the employment service - threw that out and treated it as declaring earnings and I repaid benefit equal to my earnings.

So if we are talking about a jobsworth like Denise Robertson... Let's be 'charitable' and conclude that the reason that Teesside Polytechnic and their chaplain and the Robertson family conspired to lie to me about Tanya Robertson being dead was that I had achieved - albeit temporary and part time - status as a polytechnic lecturer and that they were offering me the opportunity to preserve my career by helping me to put my illegitimate girlfriend out of my mind. No wonder then that when horror of horrors SHE attains the status of University Lecturer - albeit temporary part time - the world appears to have completely dissolved for the jobsworth Denise... No wonder accusations of an improper relationship between a tutor - Tanya - and student - me - are brewed... Gotta must prove that tanya is a rotten lot and given the chance she has shown her true colours....

I think most people are aware of how much Religious Fundamentalism hold sway in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I think we have to accept that a move from assistant chief constable of Cleveland to being Chief Constable of Scotland's Northern Constabulary requires a person of the utmost respectability. A person with a single mum for a sister wouldn't choose that posting lightly. I suspect that Denise Robertson had a lot to do with making the move and separating her daughters from their disreputable cousin Tanya may have had a lot to do with it. The last conversation i had with tanya ended with her saying she wanted to get away promptly because she had arranged to meet her cousins. It was immediately after that that the fan got hit. It appears to me that a group of Robertson's had made a special trip down from Inverness to deliver some sort of ultimatum - some complaint probably not about me but about Tanya being allowed to have a responsible role in teaching at the university. 

After twenty years of being totally ignored  by them, yesterday I got a alumni brochure from The City (of London) University. I keep telling people I've been ill. They don't believe me. I have to try to explain why my capacity to see the bigger picture is growing. At my age it isn't because I'm growing up so I say it's because I'm recovering from illness.. I want to share a different perspective of the Robertson family view of things. I've said that Tanya got lonely after I left her in London. I've said that she came unbeknownst to me to Teesside to be near me. What I've not said is that all this while her mum has been in Whitehaven and her uncle William and Auntie Denise left Teesside for Inverness ten to fifteen years ago. What I'm saying is I don't know for sure whether  Tanya came to Teesside before or after her uncle Bill left - leaving the post of Assistant Chief Constable of Cleveland to become the Chief Constable of Scotland's Northern Constabulary - covering the whole of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and based in Inverness. I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps I am feeling guilty about dragging Tanya away from London and William and Denise Robertson are feeling guilty about leaving her all alone on Teesside and so they pull what strings they have - police contacts - to try to engineer contact between myself and a lonely Tanya. What I have said is I accept that police contacts are the natural ones for this family to use but the opportunities to use more appropriate channels such as the use of probation service contacts with victim support officers  have been missed.

The single most interesting fact about The City University is that the Chancellor of The City University is The Lord Mayor of London for the Time Being.

That means that whenever a new Lord Mayor of London is created - it happens annually - he or she automatically succeeds the retiring Lord Mayor as Chancellor of The City University. This is The Lord Mayor of London, not The Mayor of London as in Ken Livingstone.

Clearly the City University thus has unique contacts with the City of London.

I sudden interest in the owner of this and related sites from The City University may indicate a sudden increase in interest in The City of London in these sites.

The week to October 15th 2005 included some very intensive activity for me and it is only now that I have found time to comment on something I did on 7th Oct. Throughout my teens it was my quiet distraction from my studies and caring for my aged parents to serve on the alter of Christ Church Coatham. I went off to university at around the same time as the vicar - Allan Wordsworth - who had been the vicar there since I was born - retired. When I returned from university I did not introduce myself to the new vicar and I have hardly been back to the church since. I visited the church on 7th October this year, attracted by an art exhibition. I could write about my early experiences in that church - I was a pupil at the church school over the road.... It was not until several hours after I left, last Friday,  that my memory finally sorted out what had changed. What had changed was that the rood screen had been removed. The rood screen is - was in Coatham's case - a usually wooden construction separating the chancel from the nave. The effect of this previously had been that the point of focus for those in the chancel - celebrants such as myself and the choir and organist - had been an altar surmounted by a beautiful, coulorful stained glass window, but for the congregation their view of the altar had been surmounted by a huge brutal wooden sculpture depicting the crucifixion. I am glad the rood screen has gone. What I wanted to say about my experiences as a child in that church is that we pupils were parked in pews at the front of the nave but on the right and so far forward that we were facing not the chancel but the wall of the choir vestry. There was only one point of visual focus for us there. It was a small monochrome print hanging on the wall. This depicted a wounded and bandaged soldier dying in a trench with the crucified Christ rearing up over him from the wall of the trench. The church was built just over 150 years ago to the Glory of God and in thanks for the Industrial Revolution. Fifty years after it was built it was thus converted into a place of grieving for the widows and mothers of the victims of the Boer and First and Second World Wars. Since I stopped attending it has reverted somewhat to its original design and purpose. However, on those three days , the days of the art exhibition, the church had been re-converted. All the art - in all its traditional and new media manifestations - mostly amateur but including photographic prints of the area by Joe Cornish -was directed towards giving voice to the anguish of the local community over the Coatham Enclosure development. In medicine there is a concept of triage. Ignore the hopeless, ignore the trivial and give help to those who need serious help you are capable of delivering. There is too much pain in Coatham today for me to be of any help. 

Just as a post Victorian British Empire squandered the benefit of the Industrial Revolution on titanic conflict, New Labour has mocked the pain that Thatcherism caused by squadering its fruits on five wars in seven years.

I've been taking a little time - nothing definitive like looking in Who's Who or the Police Gazette, just surfing the net..

I've been trying to find out a little bit about Sean Price Chief Constable of Cleveland Police. He took over from Barry Shaw in January 2003 - just before I was first arrested. It appears that prior to becoming chief at cleveland he was deputy chief in Nottinghamshire and at that time was chair of the ACPO traffic management committee specialising in the management of traffic attending county shows and gymkhanas.

See that's the sort of chap a small police service such as Cleveland can expect to attract. I don't have a telling statistic about the size of Cleveland Police but i do have a telling statistic about the size of Cleveland Fire Service which covers exactly the same area. Cleveland Fire Service has 23 - twenty three - appliances... Managing your local minimart is probably a bigger job than running Cleveland Police.

Link to the ACPO Hate Crime Manual

Over the past couple of years a number of questions have recurred. I think that I will always want to give the police the benefit of the doubt but in a perfect world there are questions I would like my solicitor to ask the police. In terms of the benefit of the doubt there is a world of difference between Saying You can't go upsetting Vera Baird she's a QC MP and saying Mo Mowlam is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Special Branch provide her with armed police protection. What I'm saying here is that Mrs.. Baird may have inherited an unwarranted level of protection from local police. The questions therefore are: Was a complaint made about me or did the authorities have Mrs. Baird under surveillance and follow up all of her contacts? If a complaint was made against me, who made it? Was it Mrs. Baird, or her agent, or the secretary the Fawcett society forwarded an email from to In essence When I was interviewed Sgt. McCartney had printouts of around 4 emails from me to Ian Swales. I request - irrespective of any decision indicated about whether I am to see further action on the allegations against me - a full disclosure of how those printouts ended up on that desk - a full audit trail. Secondary to this I have questions about whether the police used the opportunity of this investigation to satisfy the curiosity of a former chief constable's niece - Tanya Nelson - about my domestic arrangements.

Ian Swales replies:...

Richard Just to reiterate I had nothing to do with forwarding these e-mails anywhere. My guess would be the Fawcett Society. Regards Ian

Thanks. Yes I accept it was nothing to do with you and yes I guess it was the Fawcett Society but On 19th August 2005 Sgt Nigel McCartney entered my house and said. hello I'm your favourite police officer Sgt. Mccartney and I'm here to arrest you on suspicion of harassment. Now, those were his words. It seems to me that since Nigel Mccartney was on my committee - The Dormanstown Community Forum which I co-chaired up until January 2003 - there was some possibility that he was attempting irony and some truth in the suggestion that he is the police office with whom I have had the closest links. This set me thinking What changed between Sgt McCartney's arrival at my house to harrangue me over Mrs Baird on 5th February 2003 and our previous meeting a few weeks before? Five foot three of rice pudding changed that's what Sean price became Chief Constable of Cleveland. And gues what else what, since then he has become the first officer to be awarded the Queen's Police Medal whilst serving in the Cleveland Police. That's not in the gift of the local Police Authority. So far as I can see Sean Price is dead to rights for misconduct in a public office and conspiracy the blackmail Tanya Nelson to obtain a false statement of complaint.

I move to the question the Wpc asked me during my interview on 19th August 2005. She asked - not quite in so many words.. Do you fancy Mrs. Baird. Did you mention her on the www.redcar.biz site as a way of attracting her attention and making her notice you. Now this runs deep to the heart of sexism in society. I can't say what it is like to be a woman in the police service but it is way past acceptable to suggest that women in work are token women and that they are to be ignored unless they are 'fancied'. Mrs Baird is an MP and she should function as an MP and not as a Token woman MP.

The implication is that when a woman has a job it is either that she is treating the workplace as a marriage cattle mart or that she is being paid 'Dole with Dignity' because she is a single mum or her husband is incapacitated.

However, since I was last in court the University of Teesside has swapped Tom Sawyer for Leon Britan as Chancellor. It would appear that this is a signal that anything beyond addie ups and takie way in education is to be condemned - in the style of a Cambodian year Zero sending the intellectuals into the paddy fields - as elitist.

This whole New Labour education policy comes straight out of George Orwell's book 1984.

It's New Speak. We must move from having ten per cent of the population as graduates to having 80 per cent of the population as graduates but along the lines of providing every citizen with a free car by re defining a new meaning of the word car as meaning what legs used to mean.

Got Gremlins, Illiterate, can't do sums? Go to the University of Teesside Need some A' levels, professional qualifications in accountancy? Go to your local Further Education College.

Local employers used to send their training officers into the local polytechnic to work as part time lecturers training their employees on day release. Clearly now that the polytechnic have become universities and consider competence to be elitist, employers will have to send training officers and trainees to their local Further Education College...

Essentially this is inevitable because The University of Teesside has deliberately positioned itself to attract idiot students from around the world whereas the local FE Colleges must draw their students from some of the most technically competent workforces in the world - the workforces of local companies plus the children of those workforces as they leave local 11- 16 schools..

As the Labour party slips quietly into history democratic deficits are beginning to show.

Redcar is a typical example. For 28 months now Redcar & Cleveland County Borough Council has had an Anti-Labour coalition in political control.

However, much more recently - this year - a labour Councilor on Redcar & Cleveland Council became Chair of Cleveland Police Authority . Like Why?

Clearly Cleveland Police will soon merge with other forces and then it will legitimately have a labour Chair but not one in the pocket of the local MP.

It should be noted that Councilor Joyce Benbow - LibDem - is the member of Cleveland Police Authority appointed by Redcar & Cleveland Council.

Mr McLuckie is not a magistrate.

It was fairly disruptive having my computers taken away by the police but what happened was that I was left with the parts of the computer they took away two years ago. So There were things set up on that one that referred to two years ago and my emails since the end of August may have carried 'signatures' relating to my being Chair of Teesside Friends of the Earth. That wasn't intentional if it happened. The more recent arrest is a fair give away that the original arrest was inspired by party political machinations and not by any internal rift between myself and Miss Nelson. I have been inspired to look out a photo of how I looked when I was Miss Robertson's boyfriend.

If I say so myself I was a very healthy, happy bunny at the time. I will tell you what happened between that photo being taken and my leaving The City (of London) University. Immediately before this photo was taken two of the four anatomy and physiology lecturers at City married - each other - and left suddenly. They were replaced in haste by two people who were put on three year contracts. They were not given tenure, they were given contracts due to expire at the exact moment when I would graduate. I had - as they had not - already studied anatomy and physiology (at Newcastle Medical School) and so I was already better qualified to do their jobs before I even did the Optometry and Visual Science degree. I was in honesty doing the degree to try to get a first so that I could transfer to a medicine degree and they engineered to block me doing honours at all. They also did this to Mrs. Pym who had gone to City from researching vision at Cambridge. Essentially Mrs. Pym and myself would have been the ideal replacements for these two lecturers when their 3 year contracts expired. Throughout this time my mother was dying. She died at the Easter of my second year and I could not summon up the strength to go through a second round of humiliating resits give that, my girlfriend declined to visit me and discuss the situation, even if I did go through with this charade to ensure the two tutors got tenure I still would be living out of a suitcase in central London as an Optometrist instead of an eye surgeon. I have to accept that it is Possible therefore under these strains that my blood disorder, my fluctuating liver function, were psychosomatic. However, when Miss Robertson met me again - in the identity of Miss Nelson - I looked like this.

Still the same bloke but somewhat gaunt. I suppose a lady might think I just needed feeding up. ... Frankly, a year or two of further university style machinations to protect the jobs of Miss Nelson's boss Janice Webster's job and my local MP's job wrought further havoc and I reckon it's about time I - and Miss Nelson/Robertson got and even break.

Redcar & Cleveland Divisional Police Headquarters take shape at Kirkleatham. September 2005.

So far as can be determined, it appears that the magistrate members of the Police Authority have used their votes to appoint a labour councilor from an anti labour authority as the Police Authority chair.

As regards the Locke Park pond or lake de-silting.
I don't know why the pond was pumped out. Why didn't they just dig a by pass channel at the weir?
I believe that they would find that over most of the area they would hit shale at around 2 metres below the surrounding ground level and so running wagons onto the lake bed should be in order.
Since the bypass pump does not have a quarter of the capacity to deal with even moderate rainfall I would - if I were managing this project - dig a channel in the silt along the northern edge of the pond to form the by pass whilst clearing the lake bed from the southern edge.