Step into our World
16th September 2020
NEBeep
Looking to add something to your UCAS form? Wanting to impress your future uni? Why not volunteer to write content for our website? Not only will it give you some work experience, but it may also land you a paid position within our organisation, creating and promoting content. Here are just some of the things […]
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Book Review: Normal People
23rd January 2021
Lauren E. White
5/5 If you’ve ever read a book review by yours truly before, you’ll know it’s rare I award five stars. They are reserved for special works of art – and Sally Rooney’s Normal People is exactly that. In fact, Normal People is a masterpiece. I first heard of the book when it was broadcast as […]
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TV Review: Bridgerton
22nd January 2021
Lauren E. White
4/5 Dearest reader, I give you my sincere gratitude for joining me in this reviewing endeavour. I am sure it will be most revealing indeed. * Now, if you haven’t seen or read Bridgerton, you’ll be wondering what on earth is going on with me! Netflix’s latest fantastic original, based on the novel series by […]
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Study finds North East has lost out due to Brexit
20th January 2021
Guest
BY FLAMINIA LUCK A report published by the University of Warwick, has calculated which areas of the country have won or lost out economically as a result of the Brexit vote. The report, titled Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of Brexit, has used data and statistics from 2018 to construct a predictive modelling which estimates […]
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Inauguration Day 2021
20th January 2021
Lauren E. White
As Joe Biden is sworn in as President of the United States today, we look at how we can expect the ceremony to look today, and what the 46th President aims to do next. Check out my quick and simple narrative video below. Want to know more about Joe Biden’s election win? Click here. And, […]
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The Dogs, Rats and Cats of Insta
8th January 2021
Sunny H
I love animals -probably an understatement. I have six beautiful cats and a Staffordshire Terrier mix called Buster, so it is quite the mad-house at times. I love Instagram. So you should know what’s about to go down. This article is dedicated to the animals of Instagram I have grown to love over the years. […]
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Where was the national guard?
7th January 2021
James L
On January the 6th Trump supporters stormed the capitol building in Washington, incited by President Trump himself. He told his supporters at a rally in DC on the morning of the event: “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.’’ This speech was extremely […]
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The demise of the Tech Titans?
29th December 2020
Tegan
Google. Over 56% of the world’s population use the search engine alone on a monthly basis. The company undoubtedly plays a key role in twenty-first-century life. We access the online world through Youtube, Gmail, the Google Play Store. People see targeted ads based on data gathered by Google. The population use Google fonts, Google docs, […]
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Top 3 Albums of 2020
29th December 2020
Lauren E. White
2020 has been the worst year on record for a long while. But we did get some good music to keep us going. If you’re expecting this list to include any Hip Hop, R&B, techno, etc., then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. However, at least they’re current. So, whether you like it or not, here […]
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Our Top Stories of 2020
28th December 2020
Lauren E. White
Beep has been here all through this year in one form or another. We’ve even re-launched a YouTube channel. But, of course, our love of the written word prevails and we have collated our top stories of 2020. Believe it or not, they aren’t all about C*VID-19. So, without further ado, here are Beep’s top […]
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An Ode to 2020
27th December 2020
Lauren E. White
When we sat around television last year on New Year’s Eve watching the fireworks boom in London at 12am on 1st January 2020, there was a sense of hope. I remember hoping that this would be a good year – that things would be a little bit brighter for everyone than they had been before. […]
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Taken… But Real Life
26th December 2020
Lauren E. White
‘I will find you, and I will kill you’ is one of the most iconic film lines ever, spoken chillingly by Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills in Taken. Well, it seems that the character actually came to life in the form of a Mexican mother who hunted down ten of her daughter’s kidnappers until they were […]
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Film Review: Florence Foster Jenkins
23rd December 2020
Lauren E. White
3.7/5 Yes, yes, yes – I am yet again coming to you with a review of a film Hugh Grant is in. Florence Foster Jenkins, a 2016 Stephen Frears film, is based on the true story of the eponymous New York socialite singer (Meryl Streep) and her devoted husband St. Clair Bayfield. It’s a comedy […]
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How Much Sugar is in your Festive Coffee?
22nd December 2020
Lauren E. White
We all over-indulge a little at Christmas – but do you know how much sugar is in your over-indulgent festive coffee? You’ll be shocked to say the least as some coffees contain as much sugar as seven doughnuts. Cafe Nero’s mint hot chocolate is the main culprit, containing 59.9 grams of sugar, which is the […]
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The Crucial Next Stage of COVID
22nd December 2020
Lauren E. White
Boris Johnson and his government have come under serious fire over the course of the pandemic because of their response (or sometimes lack of) to the severity of rising cases of COVID-19. Now that a new variant of the virus has been discovered, and its transmission rate is faster than the original variant, there is […]
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Book Review: Atonement
21st December 2020
Lauren E. White
4.5/5 About five years ago in my youth youth, I put a film called Atonement on one Sunday afternoon. From the beginning, I was hooked. I then found out it was a book. Five years later, one pandemic-stricken summer, I bought the book and kept it next to my bed until I was free to […]
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Film Review: Notting Hill
17th December 2020
Lauren E. White
3.5/5 Hello and welcome to the Hugh Grant fan bandwagon. Since I’m re-watching basically all of his classic films (it’s Christmas, leave me be), I thought I may as well review them. First up is Notting Hill – the Richard Curtis film that made this pocket of London one of the most famous. The plot […]
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Book Review: The Wizard of Oz
16th December 2020
Lauren E. White
4.5/5 Kindness. Wisdom. Courage. Those are the three things that L. Frank Baum’s most famous children’s book, The Wizard of Oz, is about. Those three things and, of course, the ever-important lesson that home really is where the heart is. At the ripe age of 20, I eventually dug into Baum’s children’s classic, 120 years […]
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What I Learned This Year
15th December 2020
Lauren E. White
Disclaimer: I am not here to talk about the pandemic. Even though everyone wants to talk about it, we don’t need to. Instead, I’m here to share with you a nugget of wisdom that I learned this year. It is this: you know yourself better than anyone else – and don’t be convinced otherwise. As […]
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Album Review: evermore
14th December 2020
Lauren E. White
3.7/5 (go with me on this one) Anyone with the Internet will not have missed Taylor Swift’s new, new album, evermore. Described by Swift as the ‘sister album’ to July’s folklore, the latest record is a further wander into the woods of her previous work, though some tracks are slightly lacklustre. The lead single on […]
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Brexit: Deal or No Deal?
10th December 2020
Lauren E. White
Last night Prime Minister Boris Johnson travelled to Brussels to meet Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Union. It has been viewed as a last-ditch attempt to secure some kind of deal between Britain and the EU as negotiations reach yet another sticky point. The sticky point in question is actually a […]
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Class Act! Podcast
9th December 2020
Lauren E. White
For years now you may have been reading the writing of myself and Bronwen Lowery on Beep quite happily, without disruption. I have written about the perhaps more boring, serious stuff, like the experience of northern students at Durham, while Bronwen has lightened the mood and brought the laughs. Most notably, she wrote a viral […]
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6 to follow on Insta Part 2
7th December 2020
Harry
Due to the increasing influence of social media platforms, there is now a rich and varied range of content online. Instagram is one of the most popular social networks worldwide, with over 1 billion monthly active users sharing photos and videos with vast audiences. Unlike other sites such as Facebook, Instagram uses an entirely visual […]
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Sam Fender Launches Petition to Help Homeless
4th December 2020
Lauren E. White
Local music hero Sam Fender has launched a campaign and petition to provide free helplines for the homeless and vulnerable. The petition – which you can sign here (and we urge you to) – comes after Fender’s work with local homeless charities, including North East Homeless. They have found that of seven councils in the […]
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Top Five Christmas Films
3rd December 2020
Lauren E. White
Seeing as it’s officially December, it’s officially OK to watch Christmas films. After one hell of a year, who doesn’t fancy cozying up in bed watching some disgustingly happy people play around in snow, delivering an overarchingly positive message of hope and love? Even a pessimist like me wouldn’t say no to that. So, without […]
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6 People to Follow on Twitter
2nd December 2020
Lauren E. White
Twitter is a place for the people who don’t really fit the Insta gang or the Facebook mothers, so they pile in on the blue bird and share 280 characters of thoughts on literally anything. It’s a place for fangirls, it’s a place for politicos and it’s a place for diaries. And memes. So who […]
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6 to follow on Instagram Part 1
1st December 2020
Sunny H
I love Instagram. It’s one of the things I didn’t realise I loved until tasked with writing an article regarding accounts that I love. Narrowing my ‘loves’ down to a list of six was difficult, but here we are! Instagram, a platform for not only selfies and cute dog photos, but also for telling stories […]
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TV Review: The Undoing
30th November 2020
Lauren E. White
4/5 Think top actors meet trash-ish TV. That’s The Undoing – but it’s great. A simple murder mystery about some seriously rich New Yorkers and an English child oncologist Jonathan Fraser, who apparently mysteriously finds himself accused of murdering his secret lover, played by Hugh Grant. Though the first couple of episodes have enough Americanisms […]
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Interview: Kit Roberts
30th November 2020
James Y
Kit Roberts is an NCTJ gold standard journalist, whose work can be found in many different papers and on various websites. Kit covers a broad range of topics, from open water swimming to COVID-19 in his articles. Last month, Kit wrote for the Indiependent an article on Englishness and how to make it as inclusive […]
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Bullying: Are we stamping it out?
19th November 2020
Harry
It is a common misconception that bullying exists only in the schoolyard. It is easy to stereotype bullies as the wedgie-giving big kid stealing your lunch money. Or perhaps the malicious ‘mean girl’ spreading rumours behind your back. However, the circumstances are often much more complex. For us to fully appreciate the concept of it, […]
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Review: The Crown, S4
16th November 2020
Lauren E. White
The Crown returned to Netflix last weekend after months of anticipation from fans around the globe. Knowing that series four would cover the years of Thatcher and Princess Diana, the series has been trending on Twitter for most of the past two days. But is it any good? Well, the previous series of The Crown […]
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Joe Biden, 46th President
7th November 2020
Lauren E. White
After what has been an incredibly tense, unsettling and suspenseful few days in America, the next president has finally revealed himself. Democrat Joe Biden is projected by most media sources to have won the US election and the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to eclipse Donald Trump, making him President-elect and number 46. Despite lawsuits […]
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Logging out of online learning
6th November 2020
Sunny H
Getting my A level results this year was disappointing. In the time of COVID 19, it just felt so insignificant in the context of the world around me. The grades in themselves were OK, and I am very lucky that they were. They got me into Durham University who had also set a low offer […]
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US Election: What’s going on?
4th November 2020
Lauren E. White
As promised, we’d be right back with you once we had a clearer picture of what’s actually going on in the US. As for that ‘clearer picture’ – well, there isn’t one, to be honest. All that is clear is exactly what I said in my last article: this election could go on for days […]
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US Election: Not out of the woods yet
3rd November 2020
Lauren E. White
Today is the official polling day across the pond in the United States, though millions of postal votes have flooded in over the past three weeks. After four years of President Trump and everything that comes with the tweeter-in-chief, is America about to elect the Democratic antidote? The polls have opponent Joe Biden in the […]
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Make the Change
22nd October 2020
NEBeep
Here at beep we are all about encouraging young people to stand up for what they believe in and let their voices be heard. Climate change has been a long time topic here on the site and as we all know, this issue isn’t going away in our lifetimes. From major companies choosing to ignore […]
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SHOW ME THE MONET
22nd October 2020
NEBeep
Never one to pass up on artistically addressing issues of a social or political nature, Banksy always stops the streets when his art makes an appearance. Last night it was Sotheby’s auction house in London that held its bated breath for all of nine minutes while his take on Monet – Show me the Monet […]
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TV Review: Deadwater Fell
14th October 2020
Lauren E. White
3.5/5 When a housefire devastates a close, rural community in Scotland, killing most of the family apart from one – the father – and it’s on Channel 4, you know there’s foul play somewhere. Deadwater Fell, streaming on E4, is a four-part drama in which said foul play unravels at break-kneck speed. The first episode […]
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What do women want?
13th October 2020
Lauren E. White
What do women want? This question has been asked by millions of men (and women) over and over again. It seems to be something so complex and confusing, worthy of in-depth study and deliberation. Here’s the simple answer: balance. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, but women actually just want to be treated […]
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Food Review: Las Iguanas, Newcastle
12th October 2020
Lauren E. White
4/5 If you love a good theme, Las Iguanas is a restaurant you might like to try. The Latin American-style chain has restaurants all over the country, but I recently popped into the one on Grey Street just down from the Theatre Royal. As always, the restaurant itself is pristine and the atmosphere is super […]
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Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell
11th October 2020
Lauren E. White
1/5 1984 is always cited as one of the best books ever written. It’s supposed to be intelligent, sharp and profound. Instead, I found it to be dull, rambling and unremarkable. Oh, and rampantly sexist. George Orwell was clever – I’ve read his essays and I like them. But 1984? It was hard to believe […]
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Signs your Mental Health Might be Worsening
10th October 2020
Lauren E. White
Here at b**p we have always cared about mental health. One thing we’ve never touched upon, though, is how to tell if your mental health is worsening. Many of those who suffer from depression and anxiety are able to identify certain ‘triggers’ or ‘signs’ that their mental health might be worsening, and they can consequently […]
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The Best Songs for Sleep
9th October 2020
Lauren E. White
For many people, getting to sleep is a hugely difficult thing. For some, it just comes to them naturally every night. Yet, for whatever reason, so many people choose to have a sleep playlist. If you’re looking for the best additions to yours, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s our favourite tried-and-tested songs for […]
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Album Review: Smile, Katy Perry
8th October 2020
Lauren E. White
3.5/5 Once upon a time, Katy Perry was the ultimate Queen of Pop. If she released a song, she dominated the charts. With her album Witness, none of this happened. A whole era of her career was, as she admits, a failure. Two days before the birth of her first child, Daisy Dove Bloom, Perry […]
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Review: The Boat Shack, County Durham
7th October 2020
Lauren E. White
3/5 It gives me no pleasure to say it, but The Boat Shack, settled in the nest of the stunning Derwent Reservoir, was a bit of a disappointment. The cafe-style parlour has an Instagrammable selling point: its milkshakes. Everyone from everywhere has had one (or so it seems) and they look absolutely incredible. So, on […]
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Book Review: The Light Between Oceans
7th October 2020
Lauren E. White
5/5 Three things are rare when it comes to me and books. First, someone buys me a book and I actually like it; second, it takes me less than two weeks to read a book; and third, I pass a book on to my grandma because I think it’s so good. M L Stedman’s The […]
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The Best Podcasts
6th October 2020
Lauren E. White
Podcasts have become one of the most popular things to consume in modern popular culture. Essentially, it’s a little radio show in your ears on the go, or in your bed, and you can consume as many as you want whenever you want and however much you want. So, what are the best podcasts we’ve […]
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Use COVID to save the planet
5th October 2020
Lauren E. White
David Attenborough‘s witness statement, A Life on Our Planet, is strong stuff. It always is from the 93-year-old TV veteran, but with his most recent documentary now available on Netflix, you can sense there’s an urgency to Attenborough’s message this time. He is serious – he’s almost desperate. For many years now, we have known […]
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Food Review: Lola Jeans, Newcastle
2nd October 2020
Lauren E. White
2/5 Lola Jeans has long had me absolutely dying to go. Why? Because of their Instagram. Every post is pitch perfect, their whole feed is coordinated and the food looks delicious. Eventually I went – and I am so glad I went when it was half price. I would absolutely not pay that much money […]
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Exclusive: Durham Uni’s attitude to Northern students
1st October 2020
Lauren E. White
Six days ago, I wrote an article about my experience of prejudice and discrimination targeted at my Northern background/accent at Durham University. The response has, to say the least, totally overwhelmed me. Over fifty people have contacted me with messages of support, and 2,000 people have read my article. But the depressing thing is this: […]
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Food Review: Acropolis, Grainger Market
28th September 2020
Lauren E. White
4/5 Greek food is absolutely all the rage at the moment. You can’t go two minutes on Instagram without seeing a kebab-like thing drowned in yoghurt. But I tell you what – once you’ve had one, you know why. Acropolis in the Grainger Market is a relatively small but authentic Greek street-food-type joint offering a […]
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