{"id":1357,"date":"2009-03-18T20:39:17","date_gmt":"2009-03-18T19:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1357"},"modified":"2009-03-18T20:39:17","modified_gmt":"2009-03-18T19:39:17","slug":"back-from-gateshead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1357","title":{"rendered":"Back from Gateshead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just returned from a short trip to Gateshead in the north-east of England where, on behalf of the Communications Consumer Panel,  I made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/commswatch\/2009\/03\/gateshead_nga_event.html\">a presentation<\/a> at a conference on next generation broadband.<br \/>\nThe event was held in the Gateshead Council Chamber where I found myself sitting in the seat normally occupied by the Leader of the Opposition (a Liberal Democrat &#8211; there have never been any Tories on the Council!) and admiring a banner of the National Union of Mineworkers (don&#8217;t imagine that&#8217;s very common in other town halls).<br \/>\nOn the trains to and from Newcastle, I could see the monumental <a href=\"http:\/\/www.angelofthenorth.org.uk\/\">Angel of the North<\/a>. The conference was held in the Gateshead Civic Centre which contains a small scale replica of the Angel of the North which apparently featured on the &#8220;Antiques Roadshow&#8221; television series where it was valued at \u00a31 million.<br \/>\nSince I spent the night previous to the event in Gateshead, I was able to have dinner with my good friend Mavis Smith. We both used to work for communications trade unions in the telecoms sector, but I had not seen her in the 11 years since she retired.<br \/>\nSo it was a trip in which I was able to combine the professional and the personal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just returned from a short trip to Gateshead in the north-east of England where, on behalf of the Communications Consumer Panel, I made a presentation at a conference on next generation broadband. The event was held in the Gateshead Council Chamber where I found myself sitting in the seat normally occupied by the Leader [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}