Much of Jesmond and Heaton are full of students.

Hard pushed? There are plenty of nice places in SE Northumberland. Blyth has it's nice areas and hasn't been known as a "heroin hotspot" for years.
Each to their own I guess.

Just up the road from me (Bedlington)

Prudhoe's ok but a little far out, is it on a train line? Can't remember... Not a lot of train lines in the NE altogether really.

I wouldn't call Blyth a 'heroine hotspot' either!!

Theres a lovely estate just behind asda in Blyth and one on the coast5. i have loads of friends who live in Blyth and never had any probs, similarly in bedlington, Ashington, Bedlington Station, Morpeth etc.

Its the same wherever you go, wherever in the country. Good areas and bad areas.

And I personally think that Yorkshire is FAR more deprived than Northumberland. Iv e lived here 3 years and still struggling to find anything nice about it.

x

Which bit of Yorkshire are you in?

My work involves a lot of working in deprived areas and with deprived communities so I'm quite familiar with the parts of the North that are so. A lot of inner city areas of course, particularly in London, but the NE has a disproportionate amount of economic deprivation. Of course there are good and bad places, I never said anything different. SE Northumberland is a very deprived area of the NE and Wansbeck and Blyth councils work hard to try and improve things. For example Wansbeck were leaders in the UK for implementing doorstop recycling. The little things add up to improve society in general but when working from a low place it takes a long time. Northumberland is an interesting place on the whole, like North Yorkshire really. There are not enough people in the county to pay for the geographical area worth of services and facilities, for example, Northumberland has the most road per capita of any part of England. There is a lot of inequality in both these counties (York is amazingly well off, the most deprived areas such as Tang Hall are like the pretty middle ground places in Newcastle) which really rich places and really poor places.

I'm not trying to offend anyone living in these places, like I said I lived four years in Bedlington so I'm hardly unfamiliar with the area. Just telling it like it is and the stats are there to prove it. Economic deprivation equals a not terribly lovely place to live.

I live in North Leeds. Much better than a lot of other areas of Leeds, but wherever Ive lived in the NE Ive felt MUCH safer & I would feel 10 times happier bringing my son up there.

Im not picking a fight or anything just saying it like it is, theres probably some bad areas in northumberland, but then on the other hand if you look at house prices in Morpeth, Rothbury Alnwick etc that will speak volumes. Same with Leeds where I am now.

x

Yeah like I said Northumberland is really polarized with really swanky places and really poor places. It would be better if it could be a bit more balanced. The irony is that the poorer areas should technically be richer as the councils there have more people and less land to take care of but it doesn't work that way because of the fanciness of the houses and wealth of their occupants in the nice areas. The money isn't spread around but instead is kept in neat pockets while the others suffer. I should add that even some of the lovely seeming places in Northmberland with high house prices are not all that because of low levels of employment and the nationwide rural issues of richies from out of town with their holiday homes. Take Seahouses for example, a lovely coastal town but with quite a lot of problems. This is common to so many coastal towns where tourism is the main industry.

Leeds is pretty good, quite balanced. Other areas of West Yorkshire are not fab and I'd rather live in some of the less nice parts of Northumberland than some of the less nice parts of W Yorks (Dewsbury for example). W Yorks has it's own issues though such as race integration (or lack of). Northumberland is extremely white so you don't see that sort of social problem over there. Though other parts of the NE are hotspots for BNP action. It's a bit scary where racial tensions are very pronounced but I would always prefer to live in a diverse community over a one of a single race. I live near Manchester now and it is so much more diverse than Newcastle, for example, and it makes it a happier place. More mixed, it's much bigger so the good and bad parts are likewise but there are less tensions (pretensions?) as a consequence of the diversity.

I have to say since living in Leeds I noticed how there is pretty much no diversity up there but I have noticed a lot more racial tension. A lot more people are racist here and have already made decisions about certain people rather than judging as an individual and I can't bear it. But I haven't grown up with it so I guess it's just what you're used to. I HATE racism and tbh I think its a lot of the reason I dont like Leeds.

x

you go to blyth much then?