91Èȱ¬

If you're moving out of your home are you the sort of person who takes all the door handles with you?

Or, are you the type who leaves all the plants in the garden for the next resident to enjoy?

The case of the Zurbaran paintings at almost boils down to that.

In our programme on Monday, January 31 2011, historic novellist looks at the holy row that has developed.

The Church of England is trying to work out what to do with the grand official residences it has in Cumbria and County Durham.

Rose Castle near Dalston will no longer be the home of the . A more humble abode awaits, but the future of the castle is still undecided and it may yet be sold off.

There is , so Auckland Castle has no sitting tenant. The building is safe from a sell off, but not its contents.

The unique paintings have been in its care for 250 years and are displayed in the specially built Long Dining Room.

The are considering sending them to auction where they would raise millions of pounds.

say it's tantamount to selling off the family silver.

One tactic, whilst never countenancing the sale of the castle in the first place, is to claim flogging the paintings would jeopardise any future sell-off.

It's argued the 17th century paintings are intrinsic to the castle's very fabric.

In layman's terms they are the fixtures and fittings.

Let us know what you think about the possible sale of Rose castle and auction of the Zurbaran collection.

Just add your comments at the end of this blog.

explains what drove him to re-examine worst ever climbing disaster

And we follow North Yorkshire's who is the country's youngest racehorse trainer.

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Thanks so much to everyone who submitted their photos capturing their "spirit" of the North". In no particular order, here are a selection for you to enjoy.

Above Elaine Cowell has spotted Elvis. No surprise as it's her own dog. In black and white this works really well.

To the right a vivid image from Teesside.

Steve Petch thinks this sums up the North.

Could it be man's impact on the environment or nature's attempts to overcome it?

You decide.

The constraints of this blog mean I have had to crop some of the image, so they are not entirely as the photographer saw them, but I hope I have still remained true to their meaning.

Some had been treated to bring out or remove colour so I have kept them intact in that sense.

Above left, Mark Henderson took his Bingo picture at and it brings back memories for him as it was the highlight of the year when he was a child.

And on the right hand side, Noel Harris spotted this odd scene of a mound of snow that served as a stub-out point for smokers.

This tab-end hedgehog is strangely engrossing.

Ian Burns took this moody shot of a Phoenix with Sunderland riverside in the background.

I'm not familar with this artwork myself. You always learn something new.

In the image below there is a crafty unspoken gag.

Whilst the Jarrow marchers walked all the way to London during the '30s, the passing cyclists echo ".

A very neat picture from Karen Atkinson.

And finally in my selection of your wonderful submissions.....

One we can all relate to.

Gary Nattrass dug this one out of his sister and him on a North East beach in the '60s.

Where else in the UK do you need an anorak as well as a swimsuit?

We've all been there haven't we?

Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Once again can I thank everyone for their submissions!

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The following statement was issued by Chey Garland on Monday, 24 January 2011 in response to the Inside Out Programme about the collapse of the Garlands Call Centre business.

"Garlands Call Centres was a business my employees and I built up over 13 years. In its heyday Garlands was immensely successful and provided employment to many thousands of people and boosted the economy in the North East. Sadly, in our last year, we lost a number of key contracts to call centres in South Africa, India, the Philippines and Egypt and as a result the business went into administration. I did everything I could to keep Garlands going. It is a matter of great regret to me that those efforts failed, but this was ultimately an effect of the market which saw our business move overseas. I was guided in the way in which the business was closed, including telling my employees, by our bank and the professional Adminstrators appointed to wind the company up."

If you wish to comment on this story please email insideout@bbc.co.uk.

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Look closely at this picture and you'll see it's not just the boxer who's waiting to go head to head. As a viewer you are confronted with lots of faces both real, hidden and painted. ' photograph was taken at where the boxer who would take on all-comers was a regular attraction for many years.

In the latest episode of Inside Out (Monday, 24 January 2011) we feature the work of this award winning photographer.

He believes you can capture the spirit of people in their natural environment. The ordinary day-to-day moments can become extraordinary images. There are two exibitions of his work on at the moment:

• which runs until 12 March 2011.
• until 24 February 2011.

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Do you have an image that you think captures the North in some way? Why not send it to me and I'll put a selection on the blog.

Just email them to chrisjackson@bbc.co.uk

To make sure your pictures arrive in one piece there are a few tips below which should help smooth their way to my inbox.

Please send the files as JPEGs. No larger than 10Mb and ideally much smaller: around 1Mb is fine, or you can resize your pictures to 1,000 pixels across.

Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the 91Èȱ¬ for the purposes of this project. Finally, when taking photos, please do not endanger yourself or others, take unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

• We look at the dream that turned sour when the Garland Call Centre empire collapsed.


• After the floods Hannah Bayman reveals the reality of trying to insure yourself against it happening again.

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We sent "Dr Cold" out on assignment during our recent freezing cold snap to see if he could detect which of our public buildings were leaking heat.

His hotspot results are featured in tonight's show - 91Èȱ¬1 7.30pm Monday 17 January 2011 - and you can read Dr Cold's own account of his mission at the bottom of this blog.

Using a heat seeking camera we could see where our hard earned taxes were disappearing into thin air. No building is perfect but if it's well constructed and insulated then the image should show mostly blues. If it's got problems then those patches will show up in red.

The colours are relative within a single image, so you shouldn't compare one picture with another as red areas in one image may be a different temperature altogether in another. What the red shows is where the hottest part of an individual building is.

In the above image of you can see how bad the problem is. According to our expert analyst it's about as bad as it can get. Heat is not only escaping through and round windows but through the sandstone walls.

Older buildings are inevitably more inefficient, but even more recent offices, such as Civic Centre can throw up issues.

In that image you can see that heat is actually leaking out at the floor levels. It's a construction issue where internal beams appear to connect to the outside forming a heat bridge through which all the energy can escape.

As you can see below, those that fared better in our survey were the offices in and the brand new council offices in . But not everyone can simply move into new premises.

Carlisle City Council says it has fitted new windows but cladding the civic centre would be too expensive. Eden District has already insulated the roof of the town hall and secondary glazing is planned.

Our investigation is just a snapshot - rather than a full scientific examination. But all public authorities will have to sit up and take notice as by any organisation with a fuel bill of more than half a million pounds.

It could add an extra 10% to their energy costs which of course is paid for by us.

Just as I am writing this blog entry I hear so it looks like there could a load more Dr Cold's spending time tramping our streets at night.

ALSO this week:

• We follow to find out just what it takes to be a budding European champion at whitewater kayaking.


• delves into the archives in Durham to see how our shopping habits have changed.

You can now follow me on:

For our film on heat loss from public buildings we created the chilling investigator "Dr Cold".

Actually it was Ben who recently joined our unit, so as part of the initiation we said dress up in a white coat with a clipboard and go out on one of the coldest nights of the year.

He seemed only too keen.

Here is his account of what happened...

"Just before Christmas it was so cold everyone was wearing four layers of clothing (except the ).

My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to criss-cross the region after dark and film public buildings with an infra red camera.

It dramatically reveals any heat against a cold backgrounds so in just a few minutes we can see the warmest parts of buildings - or put another way the hotspots where all the heat is escaping.

I found out when I swung it around a bit, it picks out people just as well. Bald heads stick out a mile.

had Robin. As Dr Cold my sidekick was Ray. Not so much X-Ray as an Infra Red Specialist. He was so excited at our nocturnal escapade he abandoned plans to spend the night with his best mate who was getting married the following day.

We enthusiastically toured Cumbria capturing our thermal images, but as the thermometer hit -5C Ray had had enough and like all sensible people headed indoors. Undeterred my mission took me across and to Tyneside.

Here the temperature dipped even further to a numbing -10C. The streets were quiet, except of course the Bigg Market. I couldn't resist turning the camera on them. The lads and lasses in their skimpy gear just seemed to glow all over.

Even though their mam's had warned them to take a cardigan, I only met one person wearing more than one layer!

A special mention goes to the 10 people I filmed in Centre Square in Middlesbrough. They were watching the classic It's a Wonderful Life on in temperatures of -4C.

The warm inner glow the movie gives you must have been enough because not one of them moved from their seat until the very end."

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Post Christmas my new routine is to get out of bed and get straight on the bathroom scales.

I know it's ridiculous to keep a daily record of my weight, and it's probably all part of a soon-to-fail New Year's resolution to get into shape. But I can hardly complain.

I can thank my lucky stars I'm not faced with the drastic choice given to 16 year old Jen.

"The doctors told us if I didn't get the weight off I was going to be dead by the time I was 20."

Jen was 23 stone and a size 30. The teenager had suffered relentless bullying and with a family history of health problems dieting and extra exercise just wasn't working.

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Doctors on Tyneside decided in her case the best option was surgery. Her stomach would be reduced to the size of a golf ball in a procedure called .

The trouble is it meant going to for the operation as in the North East the NHS doesn't carry out gastric surgery on children. This wasn't just inconvenient, the family had to take out loans to afford the travel and accomodation to be with her.

Some child heath professionals here feel there is a need to provide the service locally. They tried to convince their NHS bosses to extend the surgery from adults to children. Although we have one of the highest child obesity rates in the country, the plans were rejected.

Jen lost more than five stone in just a couple of months, but it's no quick fix. For the rest of her life Jen will have to ensure she eats the right sort of food so her drastically reduced stomach can absorb the nutrients she needs.

In tonight's programme she tells me how it has changed her life. There is the physical side of course, but it has lifted her sprits and given her a new zest for living.

The operation is not suitable for all - but for some morbidly obese children it is literally a life saver.

Even in tough financial times, is it right that a young person whose life can be transformed either has to wait until they are an adult or travel to another part of the country where the NHS does think it's worth its while?

Add your comments to this blog and let me know what you think.

Also in this week's show:
Designer looks beyond the post war make-over to reveal just how badly the North East suffered in .

And I go head to head with Jon Cuthill, my Inside Out counterpart in Oxford, to see whether it was the North or South that really inspired .

If you want to check out the evidence in person head to where they've a special Alice exhibition.

Or you can find out more in "Alice in Sunderland".

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