You think you know all the acronyms there are then another one comes along…
NETERs anyone? They’re the over 50s equivalent of NEETs. Both groups share not being in employment, education or training. But NETERs are also not yet retired. It’s a growing issue - with a north-south divide, according to the Centre for Ageing Better.
Middlesbrough has not had a good press lately. This week the town was named one of the hardest places in England for children to grow up in - along with Sunderland. Then judges knocked it out of the running to be named UK City of Culture 2029.
But there’s a spirit there and mayor Chris Cooke said: “We’re rolling up our sleeves to go again.”
Two Middlesbrough favourites, Bob Mortimer and Steph McGovern, have not only sold out their evening at the Town Hall, the box office had to stop taking names for cancellations after the waiting list grew to over 1,000.
North East Mayor Kim McGuinness has been reflecting on the promising trade mission to India - and helping to launch the second HogmanHoway 5k which will see runners racing on Northumberland Street in Newcastle for the first time in 40 years.
Durham’s deputy council leader Darren Grimes has hit back at critics after “ITV skullduggery” captured him on film giving media training to controversial Reform UK candidates.
A Northumbria University criminologist has been awarded a £100,000 prize, Raye won the Mercury Prize in Newcastle, Sam Fender has announced a Proper Massive Stadium Tour (which kicks off at St James’ Park naturally), and somebody needs to have a word with the council in Darlington - they’ve started to put up their Christmas decorations.
In October!
Brian Aitken
Editor
It’s hard…
Middlesbrough has been named as one of the hardest places for children to grow up in the country, according to a landmark report by the Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza.
Sunderland also made the bottom 10 in the report, The Childhood Lottery, with the rankings based on almost 100 metrics covering access to health and social care, education and housing, safety, opportunities to play and whether children have a voice in the decisions made by leaders.
“The postcode lottery is real,” said Dame Rachel - a point illustrated by the fact that Halton, which is also in the bottom 10, borders one of the best places to grow up, Cheshire West and Chester, and is not far from another top 10 area, Cheshire East. “Devolution represents a chance to solve this,” she said. “If it is truly a project to rewire the state, there may not be an opportunity so significant in a decade or more.”
…but not impossible
The Childhood Lottery report said the lives of too many children were now “Dickensian with a modern twist”, citing drugs and social media as two main areas where young people were exploited.
But deputy principal for curriculum and students at Middlesbrough College, Aimey Adamson, said: “There are real challenges for some children and families, but this is about the circumstances around young people, not their talent, their ambition or their potential.
“I see resilient, ambitious young people every single day and the challenges are real, but it shouldn’t define our young people. I think their postcode shapes their starting point, but it never defines where they’re going.”
Middlesbrough’s Labour mayor Chris Cooke said the report’s findings were nothing new. “They’re linked to multi-generational social problems, inequalities in funding and national policies going back decades,” he said.
There’s more to come
It was the first joint Northern mayoral trade mission. It lasted a week and involved 200 people from business, education, tourism, culture and sport to explore opportunities in India. Was it a success? Probably. Certainly not a failure, and there’s the prospect of more to follow.
Every part of The Great North delegation will have its own success stories. In the North East, County Durham-based Low Carbon Materials progressed plans for a new green supply chain, exploring a supply partnership with Indian start-up Ground Up, which was founded by two former Durham University graduates.
Sage announced the recruitment of 128 new graduates and apprentices, 83 in Newcastle and 45 in Bengaluru. And the Centre for Process Innovation signed a letter of intent with India’s Biotechnology Research and Innovation Council to strengthen collaboration in biomanufacturing.
Mayor Kim McGuinness, chair of The Great North, said: “We’ve set the groundwork for an entirely new relationship between the North East and India - one that delivers investment, growth opportunities for businesses, builds new innovation and research partnerships, and creates jobs and prosperity.
“This mission has opened the doors for international trade, we have created new partnerships between universities and innovators, and we’ve invited the people of India to discover our amazing region.”
NETER reading
NEETs is that horrible acronym we hear all too often these days as the number of young people not in education, employment or training continues to grow - with the North East having the highest proportion of them in the country.
NETERs was a new one on me. NETERs are the over 50s equivalent of NEETs and stands for not in employment, training, education or retirement. The term was coined by the Centre for Ageing Better. Their analysis has discovered something of a north-south divide - with the North East having the highest proportion of them in the country (I was able to cut and paste that from the paragraph above).
Almost one in four people (24%) aged 50 to state pension age in the North East are NETER, against 17% in the South East. In the North East, 64% cite ill health or disability as the main reason for this, compared with 47% in the South East.
Dr Andrea Barry, of the Centre for Ageing Better, said: “If the Chancellor is to deliver a Budget aimed at realising the Government’s strategy for pursuing good economic growth in every postcode of the UK, this must include meaningful financial support to arrest the alarming regional differences in NETERs. There can be no sustainable growth in every postcode while too many people in their fifties and sixties are shut out of opportunity.”
The Centre wants NETER published as a regular headline labour-market figure, alongside unemployment and NEET statistics.
Dear Chancellor…
The thinktank True North has set out a five-point ask of Chancellor John Healey ahead of next week’s budget. Top of the agenda is support for young people through accelerated devolution of skills delivery and a reversal on the NI and minimum wage hikes on employing under 25s to incentivise businesses to get young people into employment. Other calls include an investment in infrastructure, including the A1, and the scrapping of the green levy and tourism tax.
‘Robust questioning’
Durham’s deputy council leader Darren Grimes was secretly filmed giving media training to controversial Reform UK candidates during ITV’s year-long undercover investigation into Nigel Farage’s party
Liberal Democrat councillor Amanda Hopgood, the former leader of Durham County Council, said: “The racist, extremist and offensive views exposed have no place in our politics, let alone among people seeking to represent our communities. But what should concern residents of County Durham even more is the involvement of Darren Grimes in providing media training to candidates facing questions over controversial material they had shared.
“The question is simple: was Reform UK more concerned with challenging unacceptable views, or teaching candidates how to defend themselves when those views came under scrutiny?”
Labour MP Luke Akehurst said: “I’m astonished if Councillor Grimes is seen as a useful expert trainer for Reform candidates given his own output of inflammatory and offensive AI generated social media posts.”
But, Grimes said he would not be lectured to by opposition parties. “ITV skullduggery filmed me putting candidates through robust questioning about what they’d posted online,” he told The Northern Echo. “Other parties seldom bother vetting their candidates at all. Perhaps it’s something they could learn from.”
‘Wrong way’ driving
It is just under nine weeks since a car travelling the wrong way on the A66 resulted in the deaths of two police officers and five young men. Cleveland Police have reported this week that there have been three more cases of cars being driven against the flow of traffic - two on the A66 and one on the A19.
In one of the cases, a 16-year old has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving at Teesside Magistrates Court. A 16-year-old passenger was arrested on suspicion of possession with intent to supply class A drugs and was bailed while inquiries continue.
Bird flu outbreak
About 2,000 birds have died and 30,000 more are to be euthanised at a large poultry farm near Belford in north Northumberland. Northumberland councillor Guy Renner-Thompson said no other poultry farms were within the 1.9-mile protection zone but he remained concerned about the potential financial impact on other farms in the area, especially those with turkeys in the run-up to Christmas.
Criminologist’s £100k prize
Northumbria University criminologist Dr Alexandra Hall has been awarded one of the UK’s most prestigious research prizes for work examining the links between crime and illicit economies. She is one of 30 recipients of the 2026 Philip Leverhulme Prizes, awarded by the Leverhulme Trust to early-career researchers whose work has already achieved international impact.
Her research has spanned illicit markets in drugs and counterfeit goods and, more recently, freeports and Special Economic Zones (SEZs). The £100,000 prize will enable her to develop a new book project examining tax havens, charter cities, offshore financial centres and emerging digital jurisdictions.
Raye of hope
What a fantastic night at the Mercury Prize ceremony at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle last night.
Not that I was there. I’m just picking up the vibes from all the posts I’m reading on LinkedIn from people who were there to see Raye win the award for her album This Music May Contain Hope.
Mind you, even if I had been invited, I would still have had to be here writing this. How else would your Friday edition of The Source get to your inbox by 6am?
Going Proper Massive
Last year’s Mercury Prize winner Sam Fender is heading back to St James’ Park for (at least) another two huge homecoming gigs as he prepares to embark on his biggest tour to date.
The North Shields singer-songwriter will play the home of his beloved Newcastle United on Thursday, June 3 and Saturday, June 5, 2027, kicking off a run of stadium shows across the UK and Ireland under the appropriately named Proper Massive Stadium Tour banner.
Dates in Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester and London have also been announced… and no-one would be surprised if more aren’t added once tickets go on sale, says Sam Wonfor in Cultured. North East.
City centre of attention
Northumberland Street will welcome competitive runners for the first time in more than 40 years when Newcastle’s HogmanHoway 5K returns on New Year’s Eve. Organisers have unveiled a revised route for the event, which made its debut last December and is doubling its capacity to 3,000 participants.
The return to Northumberland Street revives memories of the Newcastle City Centre 5K races of the early 1980s, which attracted some of Britain’s leading athletes. Among them was Steve Cram, the founder of HogmanHoway 5k, who competed against fellow North East runner Mike McLeod and world record holder Dave Moorcroft in 1984, shortly before the Los Angeles Olympics. McLeod won that race, while Cram finished sixth before going on to claim Olympic silver in the 1,500m.
Cram, who founded HogmanHOWAY 5K, said: “I have very fond memories of racing along Northumberland Street. I don’t think that Mike or I are planning a rerun of our 1984 battle, but I look forward to watching thousands of others enjoy the experience of racing and supporting – it’s going to be a spectacular part of New Year’s Eve in Newcastle.”
More than 1,000 runners have already signed up for the event which will support the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. Entries are available at eventsofthenorth.com.
A quick word
The Tyne Bridge will be completely closed to all vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians for 10 days from today. It will then be closed overnight on weekdays for four weeks to allow scaffolding to be put up. A disciplinary hearing has concluded that the behaviour of a Cleveland police officer who had sex in outdoor places with a female colleague amounted to gross misconduct and that if he was still a serving officer he would have been dismissed. Work is to start next month to replace the steps at Marsden Bay in South Shields which were closed off last December after an inspection found safety concerns. The £600,000 project is expected to be completed by spring. All 46 of the new Metro trains have completed their thousands of hours of testing meaning the fleet is fully operational two months ahead of the target deadline agreed with Swiss manufacturer Stadler. Sunderland University has received planning permission to erect security fencing around the now closed National Glass Centre after several attempted break-ins. This is not the place for weather forecasts but things are expected to get a bit windy across the whole of the North East tomorrow night and Sunday. A yellow weather warning has been issued with gusts of 55-65mph expected - rising to up to 80mph on the coast. The Ivy is preparing to open its first restaurants in the North East with The Ivy Newcastle Brasserie and The Ivy Asia Newcastle both opening their doors in the former Lloyds Bank building in Grey Street later this year. It will be the first time they have launched both restaurant concepts together in one city at the same time. The Source is independent and politically neutral (as well as being North East biased!) but council workers in Darlington started putting up Christmas decorations yesterday. We’re taking a stance on this one. No. Just no! Northumberland podcast Nature Garden has been shortlisted for Best Regional Podcast at the 2026 Independent Podcast Awards. Covering Northumbrian wildlife, gardening, heritage and dialect, it has regularly appeared in the UK Top 20 and US Top 100 gardening and leisure charts and has reached listeners in 127 countries.
‘We go again’
Middlesbrough failed to make the shortlist to be named UK City of Culture 2029 with judges selecting Blackpool, Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Wrexham to fight it out.
Mayor Chris Cooke said working on the bid had galvanised people across the town and “laid the foundations for the next chapter”. Middlesbrough Council announced a programme of events in 2030 to celebrate its 200th birthday and build on its City of Culture bid.
“We’re rolling up our sleeves to go again,” said Cooke. “We’ll celebrate our history, show off the talent that is going to help us thrive in the future, and give our people another reason to feel proud of Middlesbrough.”
Hot ticket event
Talking of Middlesbrough talent, Bob Mortimer and Steph McGovern are joining forces for a special evening in their hometown next month. The event, hosted by Waterstones, will see Bob in conversation with Steph, who of course is fresh from her starring role in the launch of The Source last month (I’ve got news for you - 15.09.26).
Tickets for the evening at the Town Hall on Wednesday November 18 only went on sale a week ago. Not only are they all sold out but they’ve had to close the waiting list with more than 1,000 names on it. The pair are also appearing at the Central Hall Westminster in London on Monday the 16th.
Keeping up with the Joneses
Could you be the next Bridget Jones – or at least come up with something (or someone) just as comical? A new prize to find distinctive new comedy writing voices from the north of England has been announced to mark the 40th anniversary of The Independent, the newspaper where Bridget Jones’s Diary began appearing in 1995.
It is to be judged by Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding along with representatives from her agents, Aitken Alexander Associates, and Newcastle-based New Writing North which is managing the competition. There’s £2,000 for the funniest piece of first-person prose that is under 1,000 words - the length of the original diaries. David Whetstone has more here.
New homes wanted
It’s Adoptober apparently, which means the RSPCA is looking for new homes for animals it cares for. Not just cats, although the Felledge Animal Centre in Chester-le-Street has been taking in an average of 13 cats every month - including the four cuties above - and is running out of space. Can you help?
Business bites
Flutter, which owns brands including Paddy Power, Betfair, Sky Bet and Sunderland-founded Tombola, is planning to make 1,400 roles redundant, blaming the rise in betting and gaming duties announced in last year’s Budget. It is thought that fewer than 100 of Tombola’s 800 staff in Sunderland will be affected. Baby products brand Nuby is investing £5.7m after choosing Gateshead as its new European headquarters. The relocation to a 115,000 sq ft facility in Birtley will support future growth across finance, supply, product and marketing functions. Brothers Jack and Tom Atha have spent more than £1m to buy Commerce House, the former Kalinka nightclub site, and land on Wood Street with the ambition to create “one of the most exciting places to work in central Middlesbrough”. Since establishing Atha Developments in 2011, the brothers have built a £16m private property portfolio. The North East had two winners at the British Chambers of Commerce Business Awards 2026. Osbit won the Future of Work award with Care Messenger Holdings coming out top in the Digital Revolution category. Marketing expert Lisa Eaton, the founder of Fabric, has announced two senior additions to her team. Investor Simon Moyle joins as Chair and James Tilley has taken up a new role as Chief Commercial Officer. The pair worked together at Vivup (now Perkbox), where they were instrumental in growing annual recurring revenue from £8m to £80m in five years. PD Ports has launched a multimillion-pound marine facility on the banks of the River Tees. Chief executive Paul Foreman said: “It is an investment in our Marine team, but importantly it is also an investment in the river and the wider economy it serves.” Consett-based Amethyst Homes has submitted plans to build 46 homes on disused land adjacent to Tynemouth Station
1984 Grandstand break
In a break from the usual nostalgic TV ad break, this week I’ve a clip from the BBC’s sports programme Grandstand. We have already mentioned the Newcastle City Centre 5k race in 1984. Here’s how Grandstand covered the event. It’s 20 minutes long but includes some great close ups of the big crowd and some long-gone city centre businesses, with the commentator informing us that Mike McLeod (No 3 above) had become a travel agent and passed his own place of work six times on his way to victory.
THE WIDER VIEW
The facial clues to heart disease
Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that the tongue and face can reveal clues about the heart. Now, researchers in China have used artificial intelligence to explore whether there is something to this idea.
In a small test, an AI system analysing photographs of people’s faces and tongues correctly identified all 40 patients with coronary heart disease, suggesting that a simple photographic scan could one day help flag people who need further heart checks. The approach could offer a quick, cheap and painless way to identify people at risk.
Forgotten - but memorable
This month marks the 680th anniversary of a fierce, bloody and brief battle fought near Durham that you’ve probably never heard of.
Unlike Agincourt, it was not immortalised by Shakespeare. Unlike Bannockburn, national identities have not coalesced around it. The battle has not been featured by film-makers. It has faded from popular memory in the long and bloody history of Anglo-Scottish warfare.
The Battle of Neville’s Cross was over by 5pm but those few hours were of huge international significance and came to shape the relations of England, Scotland and France for years to come.
It’s got everything you need from a medieval skirmish, says Durham University historian Alex Brown – spectacular miscalculations by warring sides, entertaining quotes from onlookers, and the capture of a king and several earls.