news.sky.com/story/1171075/hull-named-as...city-of-culture-2017

John Prescott will be the new poet laureate next !

Hold on, have you ever been?

I am born and bred on the opposite side of the Humber (Lincolnshire) and I don't particularly like the Yorkshire attitude, arrogance, self knowing 'northern man' swagger..........

BUT I'll tell you this, I can see the through that barrier that they put against themselves (and with the flack they get, why wouldn't you put a barrier up?)......the City (again, have you ever been?) is no more or no less problematic or scenic as any other big population city with an urban sprawl.....don't single it out.

Celebrate the fact that it has ideas and the drive to promote itself beyond the 'recieved' perceptions that people have......culture is about celebrating the normal, the odd and the new and if a city has won a competitive selection process then it is churlish to moan and laugh about it........again, have you ever been?

Mr Reason wrote:
Hold on, have you ever been?...

... have you ever been?

I have. I lived there from 1963 until 1999. Getting out of the place was the best thing we ever did. It's a dump. An irredeemable one, and its population is, in many cases, unswervingly insular {Apologies to Chris B, whose attitudes and opinions I tend to admire}. I have, for years, thought the problems of Hull are largely due to the idiots who thought that putting a city {indeed "Countie"} that far away from anywhere else was a good idea in the first place. Cut it out, tow it out to sea, drill holes in it and let it bloody sink.

Mr Reason wrote:
Hold on, have you ever been?

Yes - an ancestor of mine used to live in Spring Street (then a leafy suburb right on the edge of the town - now a virtually derelict street full of lock-up units in the middle of town!)

Some nice old buildings (in the centre) - but the people (urgh !) - and you used to be able to smell that "fishy smell" 20 miles away !

I defer to LO who seems to have more first-hand experience than me !

Condemned forever? OK, take that stance and you'll be a complete opponent of rehabilitation of any kind for anything, including prisoner reform and any redemption for anyone who has paid a debt to society and wants to start with a clean sheet..................nothing stays the same, 1999 is 14 years ago!

Every City has its good and bad points, I lived in Hull 1990 - 95 for University, I now travel the UK from City to City and I unswervingly state that inner city Stoke, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham et al are no better or worse...........its all perception and PR

Hull now has created a chance of its own, without doing the moaning (like Manchester always moans because it is not London)

It was telling that my hometown 'City Of Culture' was represented on tonights BBC News by a dead poet from Coventry, an old actress who moved to London in the mid-60's and a singer born in the Wirral who has lived in Manchester for the best part of the past 20 years!

To be fair, it a pretty insular place that bears the scars of socialist social engineering and self-serving councillors and MP's. Everywhere - from the City Centre to the many surrounding housing estates - have suffered from a belief that all problems can be cured with demolition and building contracts - what they have done the place beggars belief. Hull also has an odd 'City Boundary' problem too - to the west of the city in the East Riding lies an affluent and smart 20 or so square miles of villages (from the rural to the slightly more urban outskirts) that are as nice as anywhere in the country - including the 'stockbroker belt' of Surrey and Cheshire.

Will this really end up an excuse for PLC developers to empty a few municipal pockets, leaving us with glass and steel, a few themed flowerbeds and a half-hearted "legacy" that opens the door for future brownfield developer bonanzas? Blessed by the arbiters of "culture"? An unfunded dog and pony show of Barnum proportions, I'd wager. I'd love to be proven wrong though.....

I haven't been in Hull for years, but the last time I was there the smell of butcher shops hit me as I stepped off the train. I mean that as a compliment.

... ah, but, Chris ... the dolers are going to love the culture !

All that art and opera - Prescott will be there every night (as long as there is a pie shop on the way home) !

Unbelievable......how did it win a bid with such negativity from connected hometown an ex hometown people? I am not fron Hull, but know a bit of the City. I can't believe I'm defending it, a town from Yorkshire, my adversary county (like any of its other bordering counties).........but liven up....I posted before, it isn't isolated in it comparisons to other big cities, probably has more going for it in that sense.....l think it's positive and if you have doubts or are negative....maybe it says more about your perceptions than the reality....and I mean that respectfully, not personally

It's had the balls to have a go, and it's won !

Maybe the idea of the competition is to find the biggest dump and improve it - rather than selecting somewhere already "cultured" ?

Previous "winners" have included Liverpool and Glasgow.

Didn't Liverpool also have a "garden festival" a few years ago? I think the idea was to plant flowerbeds so you couldn't see what a dump it really was.

PS - The bridge is beautiful, though

Speaking as an unblinkered local, I can tell you that the worst things about the city have been man-made - sprawling estates that were left to rack & ruin as soon as they were occupied (built as a socialist ideal with no consideration of 'building communities' or maintaining what was created), including one area of brick houses built (on green fields) in 1980, and demolished in 1995, a thriving City Centre that was engineered to oblivion (clubs, bars, shopping centres) over the past 20 year and is now a 'ghost town' were 'all the clubs have been closed down'.
Yes it has some great strengths but the conduct of the council over the past 50/60 years should be considered criminal

Chris Retro wrote:
but the conduct of the council over the past 50/60 years should be considered criminal

Now .... I wonder which type of Council (which party) it has been for most of that period?

Any guesses anyone LOL !

Mr Reason wrote:
Hold on, have you ever been?

I am born and bred on the opposite side of the Humber (Lincolnshire) and I don't particularly like the Yorkshire attitude, arrogance, self knowing 'northern man' swagger..........

BUT I'll tell you this, I can see the through that barrier that they put against themselves (and with the flack they get, why wouldn't you put a barrier up?)......the City (again, have you ever been?) is no more or no less problematic or scenic as any other big population city with an urban sprawl.....don't single it out.

Celebrate the fact that it has ideas and the drive to promote itself beyond the 'recieved' perceptions that people have......culture is about celebrating the normal, the odd and the new and if a city has won a competitive selection process then it is churlish to moan and laugh about it........again, have you ever been?

I'm a Yellow belly too and I absolutely adore Hull. The Deep is one of the finest attractions in this country outside of London. It's easy to get round (unlike Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester) by car and it has everything you need. Congratulations to Hull!

Its been 100% solid Lab pre 2000's so thats the majority of the last 50 years then..............only in recent years has it be NOC or Lib / Dem

I think that London is the worst city in the uk. 95 per cent of the boroughs are dumps. Tower hamlets, harlesdon, Hackney, WIlesdon green, Wembley, Lambeth, Lewisham and the list goes on. The only nice parts are far too expensive for anyone except Russian olegarks to live there. Over 50 per cent are not white British, so it has very little identity. Knife crime is rife and it has the most acute poverty in the UK. Ok so it has a large choice of culture on offer, ballet,opera, theatre. The average person isn't interested in this bourgeois crap, except maybe once a year to catch a show.

Mr Reason wrote:
Its been 100% solid Lab pre 2000's so thats the majority of the last 50 years

So (as I've said many times before) that explains why its the debt capital of Britain !

ALL Labour areas are riddled with poverty - and the populace just keep voting to maintain that position (meanwhile Labour MPs get rich - very rich)

"The problem is particularly acute in five English cities, where more than 40% of the population is struggling to repay debt.

% of population struggling with debt

Hull 43.1%
Nottingham 41.2%
Manchester 41.1%
Knowsley 40.7%
Liverpool 40.6%

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25108891