Another week. Another Eyes & Ears. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please encourage others to sign up and enjoy it too. What a difference that will make.
Give them an inch…
Far, far away in the land of the Elizabeth Line, the Government has given the go-ahead for the 14-mile Lower Thames Crossing which will link Kent and Essex. The FT says the project has a planning document that runs to 359,070 pages, “equivalent to nearly 300 times the complete works of Shakespeare”.
That’s not the only gigantic number. The cost of this connection is £10 billion, which works out at more than £714 million a mile, meaning that every INCH of the road and tunnels will cost £11,274.
Meanwhile, the North East is waiting to hear if the extra £6 million needed to complete the restoration of the Tyne Bridge (£392 per inch) will survive Labour’s review of the previous government’s spending commitments - with politicians and business leaders saying it would be a “spectacular own goal” if the Government failed to deliver.
Some reports suggest the cost of the Thames crossing will be £9 billion, not £10 billion. This will bring down the cost to £10,146 an inch.
It doesn’t add up
With the council tax increases coming into effect next month, why does the owner of a two-bed terraced house in Newcastle pay £1,782.69 a year when someone who has a £3 million two-bedroom detached home in Belgravia only pay £1,621.94?
Why does Greater London have the lowest council tax rates in the country and the North East the highest?
Why does it cost £1,946.32 for properties in the most expensive band in Knightsbridge, where the average home is worth more than £20m, when the owner of a Band H house in Blackpool has to pay £4,784.42?
These are questions that The Lead has been investigating this week and their verdict is that the system is broken and politicians need to be brave and finally get round to fixing it.
Council tax estimates are based on property valuations made in 1991 (when the majority of people could afford a mortgage) and the system handicaps councils with deprived communities as they need to fund more essential services such as social care.
Steel jobs concern
British Steel has launched a consultation that could see 2,700 Scunthorpe steelworkers lose their jobs after rejecting a £500m Government subsidy aimed at transitioning to greener steel production.
The news sent shock waves around Teesside. MPs Anna Turley and Luke Myer joined with Cllr Alec Brown of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to say: “This development raises the possibility of impacts on workers at Lackenby and Skinningrove.
“We urge all parties to work in good faith to secure a positive outcome. Steel is not just an industry, it is part of our identity.”
Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen said: “Losing our ability to make steel in a world as insecure as this is not just short-sighted, it’s dangerous. We had a serious deal on the table to bring an electric arc furnace to Teesside. For whatever reason, that deal was quietly dropped. Instead, we ended up with unworkable proposals in Scunthorpe that were politically convenient but strategically and economically flawed.”
Room for a hotel?
They’ve already taken back control of their housing stock and, more recently, the city’s parks and allotments, now Newcastle City Council are taking on the four-star Crowne Plaza hotel.
The 251-bedroom hotel in the Stephenson Quarter is the most successful Crowne Plaza in the country but accounts published by owners the Clouston Group indicate the hotel and neighbouring land will be handed over to the local authority in a consensual deal as recompense for outstanding loans of nearly £40m.
Cannes it?
A united North East delegation are not long back from the south of France where they were trying to tempt developers at MIPIM, the world’s largest real estate fair.
Tees Valley were there too. In fact, according to editor and architectural writer Phineas Harper, about a quarter of attendees were from the UK with every British banner and brochure focused on courting investors.
He has written an article for The Guardian headlined: ‘In Cannes, I saw English councils pander to gilet-wearing property developers – at the cost of their residents’ a view which will no doubt be contested by some.
He writes: “This is what Britain’s municipalities are reduced to: grubbing for cash to build projects they cannot afford to fund themselves. It’s an unedifying spectacle to see local governments pleading at the feet of international capital.”
Alternative views welcome.
It matters
The Society Matters Foundation was launched at St James’s Park on Monday - a timely event given what was announced in the spring statement two days later. I don’t have the space here to do the event justice so I will leave it to you to read what organiser Alison Dunn has written.
Or there is this longer read from Peter Bell who gives some detail about what the speakers, Mayor Kim McGuinness, Professor Greta Defeyter, Nicola Headlam, Praful Nargund and Alice Wiseman had to say.
A quick word
Staff at Sunderland-based Hays Travel are to get a £100 bonus for every year of service as the agency passed the £3 billion revenue mark for the first time, one month before the end of the financial year. Otterburn Hall, the Victorian stately home in Northumberland with 25 bedrooms and its own private lake, was sold at auction to an unnamed private bidder yesterday for £305,000. The guide price had been £220,000. Newcastle International Airport has applied for planning permission to build a three-storey extension to the eastern terminal for a bigger baggage claim area and departure lounge. Donald Campbell's Bluebird has had a new jet engine installed as part of efforts to run the record-breaking craft on Coniston Water in the Lake District next year. The road charge in Durham city centre could more than double to £5 and road restrictions are set to change this year in a bid to reduce congestion and improve safety. Newcastle City Council is to flatten its Allendale Road site in Byker in the hope it can get the funding to build a school for children with special needs.
Unique and perfect
There’s no need to invent the perfect library - it already exists in Newcastle, according to columnist James Marriott in The Times. The Lit & Phil shaped his adolescent mind, he said, highlighting its unique charm, grand reading rooms, wrought-iron gallery and cultural significance. The Lit & Phil need to get him onto their fundraising committee.
Board means business
The North East Combined Authority has made some significant moves to add talent and expertise to their business and economy board, which is chaired by North East Chamber of Commerce chief executive John McCabe.
A dozen new members were added to the board last week: Matt Beeton, chief executive, Port of Tyne; Nagma Ebanks-Beni, co-chief executive, Prima Cheese; Brenda McLeish, chief executive, Learning Curve Group; Sandra Manson, executive director, Pegasus Group and chair, Developing Consensus; Kirsty Wells, chair, Merit; Andy Long, vice chancellor, Northumbria University; Jim Brewin, chief director, UK & Ireland, Hitachi Rail; Ed Twiddy, director, environment, society and government, Atom Bank and chair, Northstar Ventures; Gill Hunter, managing partner, Square One Law; Reshma Begum, development manager, Federation of Small Businesses; Charlie Hoult, managing director, Hoults Yard Business Centre; Charlie Charlton, community engagement manager, Newcastle Helix.
For the record, they join a board which already comprises: deputy chair Emily Cox, group ambassador for the North and head of colleague relations and policy at Lloyds Banking Group; Colin Hewitt, senior partner, Ward Hadaway; Alan Johnson, senior vice president for manufacturing, Nissan UK; Ammar Mirza, managing director, AmmarM Ltd; Heidi Mottram CBE, chief executive, Northumbrian Water; Phil Redman, area director, Mott MacDonald; Mark Thompson, managing partner, Ryder Architecture; Ellen Thinnesen, chief executive, Education Partnership North East; Sam Whitehouse, chief executive, High Force Research and LightOx.
National strategy call
Academics from Northumbria University are leading calls for a new national strategy that includes specific guidance to support the remote delivery of eating disorder services.
A paper led by the Northumbria academics was published in the Journal of Eating Disorders yesterday. It says 1.25m people in the UK have the condition and that the number of 17-19 year olds who reported having a disorder rose from 0.8% in 2017 to 12.5% in just six years.
Dr Dawn Branley-Bell, who led on the project, said: “Without national coordination, inconsistencies in care will persist, leaving many individuals without the support they need. A comprehensive strategy, including specific guidance for remote service delivery for eating disorders, is essential to ensure equitable, high-quality care.”
Once-in-a-lifetime find
An incredible once-in-a-lifetime archaeological find of a vast hoard of around 800 items which have opened up a window to Iron Age life and society have been revealed by archaeologists from Durham University.
With specialist support from the British Museum, the university team has spent two months meticulously excavating what is one of the largest and most important Iron Age finds ever made in the UK, providing insights into northern Iron Age society, technology, wealth, power and travel.
The dig was led by Professor Tom Moore, head of the university’s Department of Archaeology, after an initial find by metal detectorist Peter Heads near the village of Melsonby in North Yorkshire, eight miles from Darlington. Tony Henderson has the full story in this report for Cultured. North East.
2,000 years later…
A music memorabilia collector from North Tyneside discovered a set of original Led Zeppelin album sketches hidden among mixed artworks which he bought at auction in London. Robert O’Donnell identified the sketches by cover artist Richard Drew, known professionally as Zacron, and has now sold them to a collector of the band’s memorabilia in the US. It is believed to have been a tariff-free transaction.
Read all about it
Two more sculptures that celebrate Sunderland’s industrial heritage have been unveiled. Ray Lonsdale has created two further pieces that are now in position at Sunderland University’s St Peter’s Campus on the riverside.
Business bites
Northumberland County Council is to spend £8.65m on a major restructure of its development company Advance Northumberland, although councillors have been assured that the money will be repaid in five years. North East property agency Bradley Hall is continuing its expansion by buying and moving into the three floors above Barluga in Newcastle’s Grey Street. UK Land Estates has committed to investing £35m in the North East over the next two years. The Gateshead-based company has also earmarked £12m to refurbish and retrofit a number of units across its business parks. A refreshed business plan for Teesside International Airport has confirmed an extended commitment from Ryanair, but revealed a financial forecast of further losses.
Steph McGovern performed the official duties as Middlesbrough College unveiled their cutting-edge £12m TTE Centre designed to train the next generation of engineers and skilled professionals. Zoe Lewis, college principal and chief executive said: “The opening marks a significant step forward in our commitment to providing students with the skills and knowledge that employers are looking for.” Metec UK, a North East manufacturer based in South Shields, has secured two offshore energy contracts worth over £4.5 million. Middlesbrough-based production company XCel has retained the contract to produce live TV coverage of multiple high-profile motor races within four Asia supercar racing series over the next two years. Staff and graduates from the region’s five universities have created more than 1,000 companies and 4,000 jobs in a 10-year period, according to figures released by the recently-formed Universities for North East England.
THE WIDER VIEW
Sunderland soccer rumpus
As Newcastle United players prepare to soak up the adulation that will come their way in waves during tomorrow’s Carabao Cup celebrations, they may want to reflect on this wonderful British Pathé newsreel from 1957.
“From Roker Park, the sensation that shook the world of football rigid,” it begins. Sunderland had been caught paying four of their players more than the permitted maximum of £15 a week (approximately £400 in today’s money).
Cue clips of a polite but enraged Sunderland chairman, footballers lighting up in the changing room, flat caps, Stanley Matthews and his hotel, Tom Finney training to be a plumber, and Jimmy Hill with a lovely bouffant, all voiced over by someone with a terribly, terribly proper British accent.
“These men know that big time soccer is a dead end. The average player is on the scrapheap at 40. As in all other entertainment, football could easily pay star wages to star performers. Do the big-time players get a square deal?”
The answer to that is obvious, but another question, in the week of the Chancellor’s spring statement, is whether the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
When we talk about pay, we talk about an annual salary. But not in football. It’s always a weekly wage that is mentioned. It stops the figures from becoming astronomical, but why do we all go along with it?
Not here. Just to say, the average Premier League footballer is paid more than £3m a year. And a below average Premier League footballer will be taking home the kind of money that would generate headlines if the same amount was won by a member of the public in a lottery or game show.
But I don’t begrudge Big Dan Burn a penny.
PS Isn’t rumpus a great word?
Taxing times
It wasn't mentioned in the Chancellor's speech, but the spring statement papers contain a major suite of anti-tax avoidance proposals, probably the toughest ever introduced.
If enacted this will, in effect, criminalise the tax avoidance industry, says investigative journalist Dan Neidle, a British tax lawyer, commentator and founder of the non-profit Tax Policy Associates.
Happiness revisited
If the number of clicks are anything to go by, then last week’s classic Guinness ad was even more popular than the one judged to have been the best of all time (Eyes & Ears 14.03.25).
In what is beginning to feel like a series, here is another classic ad, the likes of which would not be allowed on our TV screens today. It features Gregor Fisher, aka Rab C Nesbitt, as The Baldy Man in 1987.
To die for…
The deadly consequences of misinformation are highlighted in a fascinating and insightful article in Byline Supplement this week - and the media, in its desire for ‘balance’, doesn’t come out of it too well.
Covid denialism prolonged the pandemic, discouraged booster uptake and put vulnerable people at risk. Vaccine uptake is down, measles is back, polio has resurfaced, and beyond infectious disease, misinformation kills in subtler but no less tragic ways.
In the UK, patients have died after rejecting chemotherapy in favour of miracle cures they found online. The spread of pseudoscience has led to unregulated IV drips, liver-damaging ‘parasite cleanses’, and diabetics abandoning insulin after being convinced they can reverse their condition with cinnamon and positive thinking.
Mental health misinformation isn’t faring much better. The author says: “We are dealing with preventable suffering, with unnecessary deaths, and with a media landscape that too often shrugs and says, ‘well, it's just another perspective’."