Schools mission
The Prime Minister’s cost-of-living tour of the UK took him to Newcastle yesterday - and it was appropriate that, in this week of all weeks, he visited a school.
Walbottle Academy played host to Sir Keir Starmer just days after the Government’s long-awaited Schools White Paper was published, which included an improvement programme called Mission North East.
“This is where the Government recognises what good staff are doing, what good schools are doing in the North East, and comes up behind to give them extra support to make a real change to the outcomes,” the PM said.
“We did this in London some years ago and the outcomes dramatically improved. The idea is to do it again and this time be utterly focused on the North East.”
Schools North East, which represents over 1,150 schools in the region, said Mission North East has the potential to become a significant regional education reform initiative.
Director Chris Zarraga said: “This White Paper recognises that geography matters. That is a significant step forward. But recognition must now translate into redistribution, capacity-building and long-term commitment.”
Another part of the White Paper includes significant changes to how the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system operates. The Conversation got the views of a panel of experts, including Johny Daniel from Durham University. That’s at the end of this edition.
Climate change
“Net zero is cancelled in this county. We do, of course, have a social care emergency to fund, not a climate cult to appease.”
Those are the words (allegedly) of Durham County Council leader Andrew Husband, who wrote a column for The Northern Echo after his administration passed a budget which limited the Council Tax rise to a commendable 1.99%.
I’m surely not the only person, however, who read the words and could clearly hear the voice of deputy leader Darren Grimes.
No matter who wrote the article, the line about net zero being cancelled is serious and important in equal measure. The green energy sector already supports 25,000 jobs in the North East and the opportunity exists to double that. The region had been moving ahead as one with that aim in mind.
With local elections coming up in May, could we end up with more councils who are unwilling to embrace the green energy sector and the opportunities it brings to the region?
It used to be Labour in-fighting that held this region back.
Investment in homes
Brownfield sites across the North East will be made ready to have houses built on them thanks to a £22m initiative from North East Mayor Kim McGuinness. More than a third of the new homes – 398 of the 1122 - will be for social rent or affordable purchase.
In Gateshead, funding will convert the historic Old Town Hall and the area around it into sustainable town centre homes, while in Newcastle the funding will allow the city council to replace dated garages with new homes for social rent at the heart of existing neighbourhoods.
The money will unlock almost £200m of investment by local councils, housing associations and developers creating and supporting hundreds of jobs in the construction industry over the next seven years.
Another deadline missed
Spreadsheet. Audit. Accounts. Three words guaranteed to make my eyes glaze over. Add in Valley and Tees and… well, what can I say (that Private Eye hasn’t already).
A chief executive, chief finance officer, and monitoring officer form the ‘golden triangle’ of statutory officers - and the Tees Valley Combined Authority lost all three last year. Tom Bryant was brought in as chief executive, and interim appointments were made for the other two positions. The monitoring officer, however, left at the end of January and it now looks as if Jo Moore, the interim head of finance, will leave five months early.
That news, not widely reported, comes as the authority admits it will miss an ‘auditing backstop deadline’ for the second year running. Ray Casey from North East Bylines has all the details and was at the meeting where Moore confirmed that, within weeks of starting her role, she said she’d been given an impossible job with an irreconcilable conflict of interest.
Regeneration game
Newcastle United have talked to the Government about securing public money to help finance a “bold and exciting” regeneration of the city centre, according to an exclusive report from The Telegraph’s northern football writer Luke Edwards.
He said the club is getting closer to deciding whether to rebuild St James’ Park or move into a new stadium on part of Leazes Park.
Public money would not be used on the stadium and the club, which is majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), would contribute a large part of the finance needed for the wider city regeneration.
A minority 15% stake in the club is held by RB Sports & Media, the investment vehicle of the Reuben brothers. Reuben Brothers (Newcastle) Limited is currently delivering the redevelopment of the city’s Pilgrim Quarter.
Friends again
Our Friends in the North is a TV classic - now it is being adapted for the stage and will be performed at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal for two weeks in October in a three-way co-production between North East ‘friends’.
Jarrow-born writer Peter Flannery believes it will be as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. “That’s not because I’m particularly prescient in any way,” he told The Guardian. “It’s because f*** all has changed. The world I wrote about has not changed, it is still as bent and corrupt today as it was then. No lessons have been learned.”
David Whetstone, meanwhile, sat down with Jack McNamara, Live Theatre’s artistic director, Theatre Royal chief executive Marianne Locatori, and Jamie Eastlake of Eastlake Productions, who told him how the ambitious joint venture came about. No asterisks were required, as you will see from this article David wrote for Cultured. North East.
Jacqui Kell, executive director of Live Theatre, said auditions would be held locally as part of the production’s commitment to developing talent from the region.
It’s rubbish really
Good news and bad news on fly tipping in the region. The North East was the only region in England to see an overall drop in fly-tipping, according to the latest government data - but we had the highest number of reported incidents in the country outside of London.
Durham County Council are certainly taking the issue seriously. Dumping furniture and waste in a Bishop Auckland back street cost a 41-year-old woman nearly £1,000 after the council took her to court.
A quick word
North East Mayor Kim McGuinness has launched a £4m programme to help people secure jobs in creative industries. The initiative will provide training, mentoring, and work experience and will be delivered by Generator, The NewBridge Project, ITV Signpost and New Writing North. Colmans Fish & Chips is marking its centenary year by confirming that it will have a permanent concession in Fenwick’s flagship Newcastle store from tomorrow. Metro operators Nexus has now received the full fleet of the new Stadler trains and said they would all be operational by the summer. A white-tailed eagle, one of the largest birds of prey in the UK, was spotted in Druridge Bay, Sunderland and Hartlepool over the weekend, far from its usual breeding ground. Bird watchers were delighted. It was a glorious failure - the attempt to break the Guinness World Record by having the most people dance to Kylie Minogue’s version of The Locomotion sadly failed at Shildon yesterday. Newcastle City Council has suggested in a report that its policy of paying staff at least the Real Living Wage was a major factor in its decision to close two park cafes. The private Westfield School in Gosforth is to join the RGS Newcastle Group of Schools by the summer term and share governing bodies. Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah raised the issue of Newcastle’s no-longer-swinging Swing Bridge in Parliament and got a “shared aspiration” response, which is probably as good as she could have expected. Gateshead councillors have approved a 4.99% increase in Council Tax and £10m of savings in the coming financial year. Repairs to the Shields Ferry’s north landing are taking longer than hoped and the service will remain out of action until the end of March at the earliest.
Hot wheels
Delivery company Just Eat has partnered with Starship Technologies to introduce robot food deliveries in Sunderland. Both companies said the service will be scaled based on demand, with plans to expand the service to additional locations across the country.
Just Eat’s North East base is in Sunderland and chief technology officer Mert Öztekin said: “We’re always innovating to improve the delivery experience for our customers, and we’re excited to have kick-started our ground robotics trial in the North East with Starship.
Double honour
Gateshead College and Newcastle University had already been announced as Queen Elizabeth Prize winners. This week (above left) college principal David Alexander and vice-chancellor Professor Chris Day were at St James’s Palace as part of the Royal Anniversary Trust awards and received their honours from King Charles.
Gateshead College was recognised for its PlanBEE higher apprenticeship programme, created with Ryder Architecture to tackle skills shortages in the built environment. Newcastle University was honoured for more than three decades of pioneering research into dementia with Lewy bodies, transforming understanding, diagnosis and care.
Business bites
High end fashion retailer Jules B, which was recently the victim of a ram raid (Eyes & Ears 13.02.26), has been bought out of administration, securing 25 jobs and allowing it to continue to trade online and from its premises in Jesmond. Claire Long, finance director at Muckle, will replace Emily Cox as Chair of housing association Gentoo who steps down at the end of the month. KLIK founder Kelly M Whitfield, who has developed a digital platform that enables organisations to transform their websites into community hubs, has secured £300,000 of investment from independent backers, including pharmaceutical and chemical industry veteran Malcolm Knott. Tees Valley Lithium has dropped its plans for a £200m refining plant at the Teesside Freeport and will buy land to build a plant at Billingham Chemical Complex instead. The plot at Wilton would have been leased. Newcastle-based GeoPura has landed a major contract with the Lower Thames Crossing project. Chief executive Andrew Cunningham said: “We’re extremely proud to be supplying the largest volume of green hydrogen ever contracted for a British construction project.” Newcastle International Airport has been named the best in Europe for customer service in the 2025 Airport Service Quality Customer Experience Awards which are based on customer feedback. Adderstone Civils, part of the Newcastle-based Adderstone Group, has landed a three-year contract at the port of Felixstowe to deliver and maintain the site’s core civils infrastructure. Orange Bus co-founder Julian Leighton has been appointed as a non-exec director of Newcastle agency Different Narrative. Global marine insurer NorthStandard, which employs 300 people at its Newcastle HQ, has increased its annual income to more than $930m despite a challenging year for the industry. Newcastle-based engineering business British Engines Group has acquired Cambridge-based consultancy 42 Technology in an undisclosed deal.
2014 ad break
Clever stuff from the makers of this 12-year-old ad for the Fiat 500X, first screened at the Paris Motor Show in 2014.
A mature Italian lady is waiting expectantly on the bed for her husband. He enters the bedroom and realises what’s in prospect. He pauses, makes a ‘wait a minute’ gesture and returns to the bathroom cabinet hoping he still has one of them blue pills left. He’s relieved to see the last one and tosses it into his mouth with a smug complacency - and misses!
The bathroom window was open and the blue pill went on quite an adventure. What’s that got to do with the Fiat 500X you might ask. It will take you less than 90 seconds to find out.
THE WIDER VIEW
Where is this going?
Last week I told you about an essay called Something Big Is Happening by an AI entrepreneur that has had a gazillion views on social media.
It warns that AI capabilities are accelerating far faster than most people realise and that many white-collar jobs - legal work, financial analysis, writing and content, software engineering, medical analysis, customer service - will be heavily disrupted sooner than expected. You can read it here - but, be warned, it will take you a looong time.
The article prompted Tyneside copywriter and PR professional Tom Willcox to get in touch (I’d encourage more of you to do the same). Here are his thoughts…
By Tom Willcox
Thank you for alerting your Eyes & Ears readers to the recent Matt Shumer article and follow up pieces about the accelerating, invasive and insidious influence of AI.
It would be interesting to read some insight into what this will seemingly inevitably do to capitalist economies and western societies when the jobs, salaries and money are choked off from the middle class white collar professional workers.
A lawyer isn't going to retrain overnight as a plumber. An accountant won't become an engineer. An IT manager isn't going to suddenly switch career and become a surgeon. And goodness knows what the current generation of school kids are going to do to make a living in the future.
I’m coming at this from two viewpoints. Firstly as a concerned parent, I’m thinking about the relevance of training and education, debt laden degrees and skills development for jobs that won’t exist in the future.
But there’s another thing at risk here beyond financial security – and arguably just as important. To paraphrase Hunter S Thompson: ‘In every person, there is a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that their life will be meaningful. A person has to be something; they have to matter.’
If this AI dominance does go the way Matt Shumer is predicting, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t, it signals the final nail in the coffin for restaurants, pubs, theatres, cinemas, sports clubs and the wider hospitality, entertainment, culture, recreation and travel industries. With no earnings to spend, everything folds. Meanwhile, we'll all be fighting over a narrow range of necessary manual jobs and competing with each other to avoid bankruptcy. What sort of society is that and what on earth is humanity doing to itself?
I also disagree with the idea that we should lean into AI to ‘get ahead’. About a year ago, I was being targeted with ‘opportunities’ to earn some money writing content to help improve AI. I refused because I'd be a turkey voting for Christmas. I’m fully conscious that it’s knocking at my door with a gnarly crook, but for now at least I know there are genuinely ethical businesses out there - like the Newcastle pubs you mentioned, which have stated they will no longer use AI art and will aim to commission, and pay, local, real life professionals.
There doesn't appear to be any platform to highlight these aspects and influence policy and law makers to effect a pause either. Should the North East already be seeking to train its workforce and the next generation exclusively in jobs we know will require manual skills and on-site presence, if we already know that AI will do the rest?
I keep saying this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps someone needs to break the Internet…
World class
Someone put a screenshot of this letter to the Daily Mail on social media this week. And our Tony was quick to reply with a few more additions. Class.
SEND reform
The Government has published its delayed proposals for education reform in England, which include significant changes to how the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system operates. Will they work for children, parents and teachers? The Conversation asked a panel of education experts.