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This is where I hope to make sense of the complex political issues and decisions affecting our daily lives in Yorkshire and the North Midlands
14:18 UK time, Monday, 10 June 2013
In my job it's fairly common to be asked to move on by the police when I turn up with a camera crew to cover an event.
Receiving that familiar request from officers of South Yorkshire, Northumbria, Lancashire, Merseyside and North Wales constabularies all in the space of one afternoon is not so common.
10:51 UK time, Monday, 13 May 2013
Horse racing fan Peter Davies could not have chosen a better venue for his last stand against the powerful Labour political machine in Doncaster.
The main stand at the town's famous racecourse was chosen for the count and it gave as much excitement as the final furlong of the St Leger.
18:07 UK time, Friday, 12 April 2013
Arthur Scargill received a stark two-word text message on his mobile phone from a close friend this week: "Thatcher dead".
He sent back a two-word reply: "Scargill alive".
16:06 UK time, Monday, 18 March 2013
A sound bite I heard on the radio news this week from a government minister announcing a new initiative to promote regional economic growth sent me 17 years back in time.
Greg Clark, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Minister for Cities, said how important it is for economic growth that local people take control of public spending in their areas.
15:28 UK time, Monday, 25 February 2013
Alec Shelbrooke was labelled by some as the ultimate Scrooge just before Christmas when he asked MPs to back his idea of making benefits payments through an electronic cash card which would not be valid for buying luxuries such as alcohol, tobacco or satellite TV subscriptions.
The Yorkshire MP's proposals provoked tens of thousands of people to post comments on the Facebook and Twitter sites of Look North, his local BBC regional TV news programme. It was by far the most feedback on any single issue in the programme's history.
10:59 UK time, Friday, 25 January 2013
A couple of days ago this tweet popped up in my Twitter account:
"Glad to see @DenisMacShane is not to be charged. Decent guy. Good sense prevails"
08:43 UK time, Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Barnsley Council has just paid £10m to buy its own town centre - even though all the land and property was already owned by the taxpayer.
The drab 1970s concrete markets complex and adjacent shops and offices were among dozens of abandoned or failing commercial and industrial sites across the country bought up by the previous Labour government's Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) over the past two decades.
08:30 UK time, Thursday, 20 December 2012
For the past 15 years a bronze statue known affectionately as Old Flo has been sitting quietly in a field near Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Now her planned sale is provoking a national outcry and the lady is certainly not going quietly.
08:51 UK time, Monday, 10 December 2012
Sheffield-born hacking exposer Tom Watson had a hero's welcome at a public debate on the subject in his native city.
The MP for West Bromwich is on a crusade to ensure the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry are not ignored by the government.
09:56 UK time, Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Without a party machine, usually self-funded and probably inexperienced at campaigning, most independents standing in parliamentary by-elections know they haven't got a prayer.
There is no way I could possibly say that about Simon Copley.
15:47 UK time, Monday, 12 November 2012
Will the police and crime commissioner elections break all records for low turnout?
The Electoral Reform Society has forecast as few as one-in-five of the electorate will bother voting.
13:52 UK time, Monday, 22 October 2012
Some of Yorkshire's brand new police and crime commissioners could have their powers tested to breaking point within hours of being elected.
How will they deal with the increasingly loud calls to discipline, suspend or even sack their chief constables?
12:36 UK time, Friday, 19 October 2012
Len added analysis to:
Humberside is shaping up to be one of the most interesting and closely contested of all the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.
It has colourful and high profile candidates in Labour veteran Lord John Prescott and outspoken UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom.
17:06 UK time, Wednesday, 29 August 2012
For sixteen-year-old Sheridan Sidlow the summer of 2012 had been looking good.
The Leeds teenager had been offered a two-year apprenticeship as a technician with the National Health Service to start in September.
17:11 UK time, Tuesday, 14 August 2012
If there were Olympic medals being handed out for political spin then the man who had just introduced himself to me as "Tony Smith" was clearly going for gold.
I was interviewing him against a back drop of largely drunken men waving banners and chanting foul-mouthed racist abuse at a rally organised by the far-right English Defence League in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley.
08:42 UK time, Monday, 16 July 2012
Over the years I have attended umpteen debates on the abolition of capital punishment. In all of them the same argument invariably surfaces.
Abolitionists would take a completely different view if it was their son, daughter, mother or father who had been brutally murdered.
10:00 UK time, Friday, 29 June 2012
The thousands of unfortunate people trying to put their lives back together after being flooded out of their homes and businesses did not get much comfort from me this week.
First, I went to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire to interview the Floods Minister Richard Benyon. He confirmed the government is cutting spending on flood defences by 6% over the next four years.
18:40 UK time, Thursday, 14 June 2012
There must be a mixture of elation and disappointment as Respect party members gather for their first conference since the election of George Galloway to the Bradford West seat earlier this year.
The master orator blew Labour away in a West Yorkshire heartland it had held for 40 years to win by an astonishing 10,000 votes.
10:20 UK time, Friday, 8 June 2012
What can come next in the roller coaster life of Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury?
This week she is the Conservative Party poster girl with her picture dominating the party website with her congratulations to the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee.
17:17 UK time, Friday, 1 June 2012
The George Hotel in Huddersfield has a reputation for making history over pay.
In 1895 it was where 21 clubs met to form the professional Rugby League allowing players to be paid for the first time.
Len Tingle is the BBC's veteran political editor for Yorkshire and the North Midlands, reporting and commentating on the challenges facing of one of the most socially and economically diverse regions in the UK.
He is a familiar face on Look North, on the weekly Sunday Politics programme, and is also heard regularly on the BBC's local radio stations in Leeds, Sheffield and York.
Born in Barnsley, he reported on business and industrial issues from across the UK and the world for newspapers, ITV and the BBC before returning to Yorkshire in the mid-1990s.
"Think of an idyllic or exotic place and I've probably reported from a shop floor, steel mill or coal mine close by - then caught the next flight out without seeing a single tourist attraction.
"It was all great experience for eventually specialising in politics. Scratch the surface of any business story and a politician usually pops out - wherever you happen to be in the world."
Tim Iredale
Political editor, Yorkshire & Lincolnshire
Analysis of politics in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
Richard Moss
Political editor, North East & Cumbria
Reporting politics in the North East and Cumbria
Andrew Neil
Daily and Sunday Politics
People and policies that make Westminster tick
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