Newcastle Lib Dems say hello

Well Jim, your most dangerous opposition at the next General Election has popped in to say hello. And no I'm not talking about the irrelevant Tories. The Lib Dem PPC (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate) for the Central Ward, Greg Stone, has sent this email to me:

Hi there

Just thought I'd drop you an email congratulating you on your Not The Real Jim Cousins weblog - very good! I am a Newcastle Lib Dem councillor.... and Jim's main challenger as Lib Dem PPC for Newcastle at the next election.

--more snipped--

Cheers
Cllr Greg Stone (Lib Dem, North Heaton)
Newcastle City Council

He also let slip that once the dust settles from the Lib Dem's election victory in Newcastle he fully intends to have a PPC page up and running. You really need to set yours up very soon Jim or come and get this one as it looks like the battle for the Central Ward may well be played out, in part at least, on the web.

Jim Cousins Defends Roman Wall

A section of the Roman Wall has been unearthed [map] in Newcastle during the building of a student hostel near the City Centre a few hundred yards from Jim's constituency office. As far as I am aware there are only three bits of Roman wall known about in the built up area between the Wall's start at Segedunum (modern day Wallsend) and the start of the more well preserved wall once you get past Newcastle's western boundaries so this is a very important discovery. The other three parts are the bit that was recently discovered near Byker Library [map] (since covered back up for protection but marked by a bit of a Roman design to the square in front of the library.), the bit at the top of Crawhall Road [map] (nothing visible here - just a plaque and coloured bricks on the ground denoting the route) and the bits above ground in West Denton [map].

Obviously the developers will want to just fill it in and carry on building. Luckily Jim is on the case and has been asking Estelle Morris if it can be made accessible to the public. It sounds like the developer's could be stopped altogether though as she has admitted it is a new find on an existing World Heritage Site and as such has to be protected.

I would link to a story in the papers or the BBC news but no one else seems to be covering it. Sorry.

Beith predicts heartlands victory

Lib Dem MP Alan Beith has been talking about their recent council election success in Newcastle. He reckons Jim's seat in Parliament could be in the bag too.

The party's top target seats at the next General Election include the City of Durham and Blaydon.

And Jim Cousins' Newcastle Central seat has been added to that list in the wake of their triumph at council level.

He could well be right if Tony Blair is still in charge of the Labour Party by the time the General Election comes around. There's still time to do something about that Jim.

Read the full article at The Journal. You'll have to scroll down a bit as the page contains a few articles.