Luke John Frost

The Artist Impression's of the proposed Public funded hotel for Stockton have been revealed and it seems that non of the £millions have been spent on the architect who have the task of turning the fortunes of Stockton around, instead the AI looks more like a 1970's Parking Structure with a bit of rusty gold cladding to make it look hip, if that is a modern style to attract people to a £80 per night hotel in Stockton, then so be it. I am all for a Hotel and have many a time brought up the dealings we had when Thornaby got refused a hotel due to it having a "detrimental impact on Stockton High Street" and was shelved without looking at the bigger picture of where the proposed location was situated and the major benefits of having a Travel Lodge on the Teesside Park Complex near to the a International White Water Course, Teesside Golf Course and of course on the doorstep to one of the biggest retail parks in the North. I think I am right in saying that Stockton Borou...

This year marks the 5th Anniversary of the Picture Teesside Page on Facebook which I set up to promote the Region to the World and it has achieved more than I originally thought it would do. In the 5 years since launching it has reached over 8 Million people and has attracted over 6,000 likes with a host of local photographers sending in fantastic positive images of our area. The main reason I set the Page up was to try and fill the gap that was left by the local tourism board when it disbanded, although to some this seemed to be a positive step as the area was being promoted as the controversial brand of the Tees Valley. Not a popular choice between local people and businesses. Where exactly is the Tees Valley? To mark the 5th Anniversary I am hoping to get permission to open the Thornaby Community Kitchen as a pop up gallery of Teesside positivity with a bit of local heritage thrown in for good measure.

As many of you are aware I have Aspergers and I am quite happy to discuss issues and always welcome criticism and feedback but I have just been introduced to a concept called "Theory of Mind" and it is driving me insane.  I am now at a point where my ideas and thoughts are being designed into diagrams and full essays written to describe an idea to make it easier for other people to understand the wonderful world that my brain occupies. It is a good job I have a dry sense of humour and find it easy to laugh at myself as everytime I look into it all I can do is think of the awkward situations that I have been in. There has been a lot.  But thankfully it does make me understand that the neurotypical's of society haven't got a clue what goes on in my head and having to explain in more detail, whilst frustrating is making me and my organisation more efficient, effective and achieving a greater impact in less time that it has taken me to write this update. Geez it...

We all claim to love our National Health Service and rate it as the best in the world and that we should be protecting services for the future, yet when it comes to have a say on our local Health Services we seem to not be bothered about sharing our views and opinions. Over the past year I have attended many NHS Better Health Programme engagement events with the aim of both listening and having an input and the one theme running through them all is the lack of attendance by both the public and those elected to represent us. Here I was in thinking that we really cared about our NHS. What frustrates me more is the fact that clinicians, doctors, nurses, midwives have managed to turn up to these events, but the public haven't. Yet I am pretty sure that when it comes to the publication of the actual report on how our local health services move forward there will be public outcry and no doubt the media will be whipping up a storm. I have had the pleasure to sit and listen to many p...