Rory Stewart

jen I still can't see any comments section, possibly it's because I'm using my phone.

An undismissive view of Twitter from a scientist.

You can still write to the editor. To say that you "have no voice" on issues reported in a paper seems like misinformation to me.

Jane, down the bottom of the article is a link to put a comment on it, but you need a facebook account to sign up to it. The comment with the link on about the Pont Valley, which is over near Consett, was a facebook link.

www.theyworkforyou.com

Actually, I have signed the Pont Valley petition.
I have written to Pat Glass before about lots of things. I do it by email. She replies either by email or by letter. There's a website called www.theyworkforyou.org I think, or it could be .com
UKCoal wanted to opencast near Gibside, so the National Trust bought the land so they couldn't. Opencast is nothing like mining, it destroys the character of the land, and provides jobs for lorry drivers, just a few, not miners. One of the sites is near the Tanfield railway and one on your side of the border, Jane, is at the roman road. UKCoal have tried to get permission for all these sites in the past and have been turned down. They just carry on in the hope that the opposition will give up.
The point is that the newspaper should not only let people comment online if they have facebook or twitter. It should be open for all internet users, like all other papers are.

Bags the concern is the precarious financial position of Uk Coal, and the concern that, having done the mining, they would still be broke and the cost of restoring the landscape would fall on the taxpayer. I'm not sure how many jobs opencast mining does create anyway.

jen those links to Facebook and Twitter only allow you to share the story on your own timeline. If I did that, my own Facebook friends would see it and be able to comment, but it wouldn't be like a thread of comments on the Journal's own website, that anyone could comment on.
I don't really know how Twitter works but someone reading that article wouldn't know anyone else had tweeted about it.
I agree with bags you will have to resort to pen and paper!

Presumably a mine would bring some employment to the area?

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about the beer and bingo tweet. I didn't miss that indirectly but I did dismiss it fairly quickly, though I read one or two serious articles about its ramifications. But other than what is forced upon one's notice of such toerags, one really can avoid nearly all of their nonsense, so I know nothing more about The Chap Shapps, nor do I feel the need to know any more at the moment so he takes up none of my space and almost none of my time (only that time that I (ahem) 'waste' in discussions like this on gransnet) {you know that's tongue in cheek GNHQ }

Why can,t you write to your MP about things that concern you in your local area, you know, in the old fashioned snail mail way that people used to voice their concerns before Twitter and Facebook. Snail mail still works, you know, and it can be very effective.

One of the local sites for opencast is just up the road to where I live it is previously derelict land spoiled by old mine workings and nothing look at but adjacent to it there are two small housing developments of really nice new houses (way out of my price range)but I cant help sympathising with the owners about the mess, noise and pollution so near their homes.

www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/calls-north-east-opencast-plans-6933067
Here you are Jane. It was on the BBC news tonight. It has a link to the Pont Valley website with a petition on it to stop the opencast.

Jen you're doing better than me.
I looked at a couple of articles on the Journal website ( a new super-authority for the NE and the Duke of Northmberland selling paintings to pay for the flood damage at Newburn) and couldn't even see any comments, let alone work out how to leave one with either my Twitter or FB accounts!

Jane, it's the Journal. If you read an article it says you can comment by clicking on the link below. When you do that, it says you have to sign on with your Facebook account, or you can follow on twitter.

Bags, Shapps was the idiot who tweeted about the beer and bingo ad, after the last budget and caused quite a furore. I really do not know how you could have missed that.

I do not think they should be tweeting in the House of Commons when they supposed to be listening to a serious debate, not that many of them do listen. Most of them just turn up for the vote.

Well Jen I think it depends what they are tweeting.
We may not like it, but lots of younger people use the Internet (blogs, youtube etc)almost exclusively to read and form opinions, so if an MP is using Twitter to engage with younger people I think that's a good thing.

If they are tweeting frivolous things, as long as it is not offensive in any way, why shouldn't they? We can't expect them to be doing serious, work/type stuff 24/7 365 days a year.

Which local newspaper are you referring to?

I didn't do that, Jane. What I said was that tweeting was a waste of time and space. It's a waste of the time that MPs should be using to do more important things.
Bags, I do not follow anyone on twitter, but it cannot be avoided.
I just saw an item on the news about opencast mining in Northumberland. UKCoal are trying to get planning permission to opencast four new sites in the North East, despite the fact that they are in liquidation. The government refuses to comment on it, as does UKCoal.
If I want to comment on it on the local newspaper's website, I have to open a Facebook or twitter account. My voice cannot be heard locally, even though one of the sites is five minutes drive away, and another one ten minutes drive.

Agree Bags.
Jen, complaining that people take up 'space' on the Internet with their tweets is a bit like complaining that the newspapers are full of rubbish, but continuing to buy them.

I had heard of Grant Shapps but was never interested enough by what I heard to look him up on the stuffed full internet until just now. Conservative Party Chairman. Big deal. I'll continue not to follow him on Twitter. You have that choice too.

It clearly doesn't impose itself on me when I go on the interenet because i don't know who or what this Shapps person is. Obviously not that famous and all-intrusive. There are ways of avoiding what you don't like, you know.

Space on the internet?

You don't have to follow any of that though. It needn't take up your time. Those whose time it does "take up" have chosen to have it so. It's called democracy.

Takes up space on the internet, on every website I go on, so presumably two dimensional, and takes up the fourth dimension, time, but not enough of that, with people like Shapps tweeting the first thing that comes into his head.

A thought: does Twitter take up any actual three dimensional space?

Most MPs do take their job seriously and most MPs are not in the news much.