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Looking for Jobs in the North East? A list of Hundreds of Employers Recruiting in the Area

A list of around 1,000 companies with vacancies in the Yorkshire, Tyneside, Teesside / Tees Valley, Northumberland and Leeds areas.

The list is split into two tables: the first contains charities, education and public sector organisations. The second table lists private sector companies.

Where given, company sizes are measured by the number of people they employ. This figure usually includes all employees of the company, or parent company - not just those employed in the North East.

A few companies are listed but carry no links - these are organisations that I estimate should have a significant recruitment effort (based on turnover and number of employees), but I can find no website or recruitment link on their website.

Other useful local company lists include Newcastle City Council's Business Directory, The NEPIC Directory, Yell, Free Index and Endole.

The linked websites are checked regularly for phishing, viruses and malware and any infected links are removed when found. Companies who only offer low-quality jobs such as unpaid internships, commission-only sales or work-at-home piecework will not be included. Minimum company size is generally 50+ employees and £1M+ turnover, however exceptions are made where future expansion seems likely or where the company works in an area where jobs are scarce in the North East.

The list is not exhaustive. Suggestions for new additions or corrections are welcome.

Unfortunately, many of the websites linked to below require Javascript enabled to function correctly.



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UK Home Ownership, House Prices and Wages: Prices Rising, Ownership Falling

The price of a home has been rising faster than wages. Ownership levels are dropping.



The chart above shows that house prices for first-time buyers have massively inflated between 1969 and 2012. Not only have prices increased, but they have become more unaffordable. In 1969 the average home cost just over £4,000, against an average buyers' wage of £1,600 (price: 2.5 times income). By 2012, the price had increased to almost £182,000 against a buyers' wage of just under £45,000 (price: 4 times income). The following graph shows the same data between 1978-2012, adjusted for inflation using 2012 as the basis.

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How an Ageing Population Affects Voting Power in the UK

Younger age groups have less voting power and will have even less in future.



The most obvious feature of this dataset is that voting turnout amongst the 18-34 group has been in decline since 1983, though it did start to pick up again for the 25-34 year olds in 2005 and for the 18-24 year olds in 2010. Turnout amongst the older age groups has remained consistently higher since 1997, and the difference is particularly noticeable in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

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The Top 100 Names for Children Born in England and Wales 2012

There were over 28,000 different boys' names and over 36,000 different girls' names spread over 729,674 births. The top 10 names account for 13% of all names. The names are listed in order of popularity (most popular to least popular).



Boys

Harry
Oliver
Jack
Charlie
Jacob
Thomas
Alfie
Riley
William

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Are There too Many Immigrants in the UK? The Facts and Figures on Immigration

In a 2012 Ipsos MORI poll, 70% of respondents strongly agreed or tended to agree with the statement, "there are too many immigrants in Britain."

This is the highest level of agreement in the 10 polls in this series available from Ipsos MORI, covering 1989 to 2012.



The details of the 2012 poll can be seen below:

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Statistics: Inflation Across Europe 2005-2012

HICP / CPI Inflation figures for 27 EU countries 2005-2012

The graph below shows cumulative inflation levels for each of the EU countries available from the Office for National Statistics. The inflation index used is the HICP - the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (CPI in the UK).



The group of countries experiencing higher inflation over this period mainly consists of EU countries that have not joined the single currency - Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. The exception in this group is the newest addition to the Eurozone, Estonia, which adopted the Euro in 2011.

The following graph shows the same data with an adjusted scale on the Y-axis to show the lower-inflation group of countries in greater detail.

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1,000 to 1,500 Jobs to be Lost at Middlesbrough Council

Exciting Times: Up to half of council's employees to be sacked due to budget savings - consultation to be opened.

The Northern Echo and Evening Gazette report that Middlesbrough must save an additional £11M on top of previous cost-saving estimates, which may result in the loss of up to 1,500 employees - over half the number of people currently working at the council (2,500).

In a subsequent article, the Northern Echo reports that 600 jobs have already been lost since 2010.

Looking at the Council's own 'employment details' figures published on their website, we can see that they have indeed reduced their headcount by 554. However, measured in terms of full-time jobs, the number of people employed has actually only reduced by 227 (Note: figures don't include school staff.)


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How to Switch Off Autorun on Windows XP

Windows XP will automatically open or run the contents of CDs and USB sticks when loaded or inserted. Here's an easy way to prevent it.











To disable autorun [current user, all devices]: click here

To disable autorun [current user, removable devices]: click here


To disable autorun [all users, all devices]: click here

To disable autorun [all users, removable devices]: click here

The links above will download Windows .reg files which if allowed to execute will modify your Windows registry settings. Please note that these files have only been tested on Windows XP Home Edition, but they should work okay for Win XP Pro. Obviously, you proceed at your own risk etc. but quite a few people have already used these links (as provided in my earlier guide to Windows XP security and so far no-one's emailed or commented to accuse me of blowing up their computer. You should check the contents of the files with a text editor such as notepad to ensure they don't contain anything malicious, but if you've found this page by searching for information about disabling Windows' autorun feature, then I doubt I need to tell you that. If you're looking for information on how to disable autorun in other versions of Windows (or information on additional settings for these registry keys), then this Microsoft article should prove useful.

The .reg files I've provided above will add or modifiy the following registry keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutoRun
- for the current user, or:-
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutoRun
- for all users.

The NoDriveTypeAutoRun key will be set to the value of 04 (hex 04) or 255 (hex FF) depending on whether you want only USB sticks (04) or all removable devices (FF) prevented from auto-running.

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While wandering the BBC blogs, I came upon this article by Rory Cellan-Jones.

It reminded me of something that's been bothering me for some time. What a strange, backward step it is to have to write 'apps' (programs) for different devices just to use a website.

The great thing about the internet is that it has standardised a formatting language (HTML/CSS), a transmission protocol (TCP/IP) and various programming languages (but mainly Javascript) so that any computer-like device can download a webpage and display it in exactly the same way as any other computer-like device.

Yet the arrival of mobile internet has somehow caused the rise of the 'app'. Instead of concentrating on making webpages that function correctly on all devices, suddenly we have programmers writing native code for lots of different devices. You could argue that at least it's creating jobs for programmers. True, but I'd argue it's time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

The argument in favour of mobile apps goes, as far as I can tell, that the processors in mobile phones are still quite weak compared to proper computers, and therefore it helps to use native code to speed things up. That might be understandable when it comes to things that need a lot of computing power, like iplayer, but it really doesn't explain why every other website has to have a mobile app just to render some text and pictures.

From a security point of view, the last thing you should want to do is install programs willy-nilly, yet websites are increasingly pushing mobile users towards the idea that this is a normal state of affairs.

If your website is too slow on a mobile device, I can't help suspecting that the underlying HTML/CSS and code that powers your website has become far more complex than is actually required - or someone's mobile's web browser isn't very good.

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How Javascript and cookies can compromise your security and privacy on the web.

The main thing about a computer, the thing that really defines it and makes it a computer, is that it's programmable. Not programmable in the limited sense that it will remember which TV programs to record while you're out, but in the true sense of programmable – your computer is constantly following a list of instructions, and it will absolutely follow them.

This is the great strength of true computers. Unfortunately, in the modern interconnected world, it is sometimes their great weakness.

Javascript

The internet , as you know, is made up of websites and webpages. The pages you browse to are displayed on your screen by a web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari. Generally speaking, the information sent to your browser from the web is quite simple – it's just text and pictures, and some simple instructions* on where to put them. That's basic HTML, the language the web is written in. Basic HTML can't do calculations, it can't run computer games in your browser, it can't really command your computer to do something in the way a programming language can. It just tells your browser what text and pictures to display, and where to put them, and nothing much more than that.

The nice thing about this way of doing things is that it's relatively safe from a security point of view*. If your web browser can only display things or play sounds, then it's not so likely that information sent from the internet can take over your computer.

As the internet evolved, it quickly became desirable to add a bit more cleverness to the way web pages worked. It's impossible to run a shopping or banking website without a program being run somewhere to keep track of things and provide the 'brains' needed for dynamic content. It's at this point that programming languages have to be used, because basic HTML can't do that sort of thing. So the web very quickly evolved to make use of programming languages.

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