Luke John Frost

Yet more homes are planned for Thornaby, already this year we have seen application after application flood into the TS17 area and to be honest, there is too many to list on this image. We live in a era where our towns are open season to greedy money fuelled developers whose only aim in life is to turn over a quick pound. Before long our towns will be concrete jungles with little or no infrastructure and it is us, the taxpayer who will have to pick up the price tag to rectif y improvements while the developers roll around in muck, getting there bellies tickled by local authorities. Our green lungs are being pulled from within, and before long we will very little in the way of nature that not only provides our wildlife with habitat but it provides us with great health benefits, both physically and mentally.

Just to make something clear, I am not against investment in our area, far from it. I have signed many support comments for developments such as Aldi, Parade of Shops on the Industrial Estate and even supported the Hotel proposal and the Student apartments on Mandale Triangle. Saying that I have also objected to a few, such as the Mcdonalds on the centre and recently the two takeaways that where planned for Lanehouse Road, along with the proposal for 150 homes at the Barrage. In fact I am still the only objector on the Stockton Council Planning portal. I believe investment is great, when it is in the right area and with the right amount of demand, access and need. Over the years we have had a bombardment of planning applications go through Stockton Borough Council for south of the Tees developments that has seen the population swell and the infrastructure buckle under the weight of bad management and developers who constantly cut corners to make a quick pound or two. In the pas...

So this evening our government has agreed in the House of Commons to renew trident at the cost of £31bn - That has been magically plucked out of thin air. A couple of weeks ago, the politicians of this nation told us that we are paying too much to stay in a union (EU) that created jobs, secured growth and invested in the areas of most need, yet we can afford to build submarines that will circle the globe awaiting for WWIII to be announced, if there is to be another war on the grand scale of those penned down in history. So, in a time when we need housing, schools, upgrades within the NHS, Jobs and investment into our communities, our representatives choose to renew this scheme. I guess we all can wait for home and a school that we can send the future children of this country, but only after we have enough food to keep them strong and heating to keep them warm during the winter months. Lets hope no future children require the services of the NHS, if they do ... take them to see the ...

I took this photo last month and to me it says everything you need to know about Teesside. We are an area that has a wealth of history and culture, yet not many actually know about us. But what they do know about us is that we have a Premiership Football Club and a rich sporting background from Jack Hatfield and Chris Tomlinson to Freddie Dixon and sporting grounds like Thornaby Racecourse and Ayresome Park. We are an area famous for artist impressions that have never come t o fruition. So many planned projects that have fallen through at the last hurdle, yet we have a habit of creeping up on us further down the line, even if it doesn't quite resemble the colourful impressions that where once advertised. But what we are most famous for, is our engineering background, we built the world then went on to build more. We have a rich heritage of Bridge building, ship building, Locomotives and much more. Yet we have shown our soft side in producing pottery and breeding the Clevela...

 A busy few month for me coming up, which will see my biggest event to date take place over 23 days over August to persuade young people to take up sports and that it is actually fun and a lot more exciting than sitting playing on a game console day after day.  This is a follow on from the Youth Week Event the Partnership hosted back in April, in which 181 young people took part in a free sporting activity here in Thornaby. We also look forward to hosting another youth event in October to get more young people active.  Next year, whilst we hope to retain the three youth events, the focus switches to the "environment in which we live" - Looking at planting schemes and tidying up of our woodland and streams ... All of course is part of the 5 year plan I put together for the Thornaby Community Partnership.