It was a scorching Bank Holiday weekend and people were out in force. That didn’t work out too well in North Tyneside where some inconsiderate drivers blocked the RNLI volunteers from launching a lifeboat - and weren’t happy about being asked to move their cars. Unbelievable!
Driving around Northumberland, meanwhile, was described as “mental” and prompted renewed calls for the A1 to be dualled. But it was sunshine and smiles in Sunderland. Not just because of the football but Radio 1’s Big Weekend attracted 100,000 to Herrington Country Park.
There’s a new council leader in Newcastle - does this mean we will soon find out what an independent investigation into the culture inside the Civic Centre discovered?
Also this week, what our income tax payments tells us about the success of Levelling Up, Reform will ‘pay’ for a by-election in Gateshead but the party in Durham is criticised for creating two new political assistant roles.
One of our health trusts is named among the best in the country, enterprising villagers in Northumberland have secured £1.8m to help with their net zero plans and, as Anthony Gordon prepares to move to Barcelona, a Newcastle United No.9 is up for sale - at auction.
As time marches on, people are forgetting about the sacrifice made by so many during the Second World War. This prompted master storyteller Harry Pearson to put pen to paper (OK, he used a keyboard and computer) for Eyes & Ears to tell the story of his uncle, a reporter with the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough who joined the RAF.
June 6 will mark the eighty second anniversary of the D-Day landings when the Allied forces invaded Normandy to begin Operation Overlord, the campaign to liberate western Europe from Nazi Germany.
Harry’s uncle didn’t live to see that historic day, his life ended just a week before - 82 years ago tomorrow to be exact:
“In aerial combat a pilot might put faith in his skill, experience, coolness and speed of mind, but flying through flak was a lottery in which the prize was survival. You either got hit, or you didn’t. Shrapnel might pass through the plane with no effect, or ignite a fuel tank, smash the propeller, or blow a hole in your skull.”
The story of Harry’s uncle, two uncles in fact, should be remembered, not least for ‘the kindest lie’ in such a savage time. Enjoy the read.
The seat’s taken
The final voting seat at the table of the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority will be taken by Newcastle’s Lib Dem leader Colin Ferguson.
He was formally appointed leader at the council’s AGM on Wednesday following a deal between the Lib Dems and the Greens which will see the Greens serve as a “co-operative opposition,” giving them influence over the Lib Dem administration’s policies in return for votes in the council chamber on an issue-by-issue basis.
After the meeting, where Reform won the vote to be the official opposition, Councillor Ferguson promised 12 months of stability for the city.
“What we are firmly in agreement on is that we need to put the residents of the city first to deliver stable administration and to get on with actually moving this place forward, because we have had 18 months, if not more, of dither and delay, of uncertainty, of confusion, of instability. It is time we put that behind us.”
He said priorities included improving the city’s parks, accelerating house building, increasing recycling rates, and tackling inefficiencies.
Green group leader Nick Hartley said there was a need for more collaborative politics in Newcastle and that he expected the 12-month agreement with the Lib Dems to hold until 2027’s local elections
The mayoral strategic authority Cabinet will now comprise of two Labour (one being Mayor Kim McGuinness), one Conservative, one Lib Dem and four Reform members, something Bob Hudson wrote about in the Bank Holiday Monday edition:
Is the wait over?
Now that the elections are over and there’s a new Lib Dem leader of the city council, can we expect to see the findings of the independent investigation into the culture at Newcastle Civic Centre to be published some time soon?
To recap, in December 2024 a Lib Dem motion to commission an independent governance review into the culture and officer-member relations was supported by the Labour administration. The start of that investigation by the Local Government Association (LGA) was delayed until the outcome of a separate investigation into a bullying complaint made against former leader Nick Kemp by a senior director.
In March this year the Local Democracy Reporting Service said the LGA investigation was complete but that the report would not be published until after the May elections - a decision which drew protests from the aforementioned Lib Dem leader Colin Ferguson and Green group leader Nick Hartley.
Councillor Ferguson said then that it was “intolerable that the city has had to wait over a year for the presentation of this report,” calling it a “vital part of the process of moving past the instability that has rocked the Civic Centre for the best part of the last two years.”
Let’s crack on
Businesses in Newcastle certainly want the new leadership to hit the ground running. Stephen Patterson, Chief Executive of NE1, which represents the interests of 1,400 businesses, said: “We would like to commend the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party for putting the needs of the city ahead of party politics and forging a new chapter for Newcastle.
“Whilst the economic foundations of the city are in a good place, there are several important and pressing challenges facing Newcastle and its businesses at present. Businesses want to see ambition matched with action. We know this vision is shared at a political level and are keen to get to work with the new administration to address these important issues as soon as possible.”
Taxing times
When the Office For National Statistics puts out a release headlined ‘Country and regional public sector finances, UK: financial year ending 2025’ that’s when I look to someone such as Arlen Pettitt to make sense of it for me in his excellent Wor Room policy newsletter.
The headline figures are not great so far as the North East is concerned. I think we all know that initiatives such as Levelling Up have done precious little to close the north-south divide - and the income tax figures contained in the release certainly support this.
Back in 1999-2000, the UK purse drew 18% of income tax from London, 19% from the South East and 3% from the North East. In 2024-25, that became 26% from London, 18% from the South East and 2% from the North East.
We are, of course, paying proportionately more into the Treasury coffers when it comes to betting and gaming, tobacco and fuel duties, as Arlen highlights.
One down…
An as-yet un-named member of Gateshead Council’s Cabinet will give up their annual special responsibility allowance of £19,689 to offset the cost of a by-election caused by the resignation of a Reform councillor less than two weeks after her election. Leader Nick Allan said the party also intended to reduce the number of Cabinet posts by one.
Two up
Reform has come under fire in Durham over a decision to create two political assistant roles - one each for the two largest parties, Reform and the Lib Dems. The two roles had been due to cost the council more than £85,000 per year before Reform backed an amendment to make the Lib Dem role part time.
In rude health
Northumbria Healthcare has achieved Advanced Foundation Trust (AFT) status which means it is one of the NHS’s highest performing organisations, giving bosses greater financial freedom to invest in services and improve population health outcomes. CEO Dr Birju Bartoli said: “This should give patients, our staff and the local communities we serve confidence in our services and confirmation that we continually strive to improve for them all.”
Victims demand inquiry
Two breast cancer patients who said their lives were put at risk while being treated by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT) have launched a petition calling for a public inquiry.
A report published last year found multiple failings in breast cancer services at the trust including missed cancers and unnecessary mastectomies. The BBC has learned 270 women have been harmed, 45 moderately and 19 severely, including one death.
About 1,500 medical records are currently being reviewed from between 2023 and 2025 and Durham Police is investigating whether any criminal offences have been committed.
Village re-energised
It was just over two years ago that former BBC Look North Editor Andy Cooper brought us the story of Humshaugh, the picturesque Northumberland village where it was hoped that profits from a solar farm and a share-option plan would help the village reach net zero by 2030.
“In a village hall in the Tyne Valley a group of locals contemplate the end of the world. They do so with a smile, gallows humour, and an astonishing degree of positive thinking. For this is the extraordinary village of Humshaugh, six miles to the north of Hexham. And this is a meeting organised by Humshaugh Net Zero. The group aims to do its bit to save the planet - and therefore all of us. And they want other communities to follow their lead.”
Quite the introduction from Andy. And how are they getting on? Well, it’s been a long and sometimes frustrating road, he says, but their community energy project has now secured the £1.8m funding required to make it happen. Contracts should be tied up in the next few weeks and hopefully it’ll be operational early next year.
And the launch of the Government’s Great British Energy Community Fund could see other towns and villages follow the Humshaugh lead.
Some people…
At least nine people have died after getting into difficulties in open water in the past week - yet RNLI volunteers at Cullercoats were met with “verbal abuse and confrontational behaviour” over the bank holiday weekend. People had refused to move cars parked on double yellow lines on the access road to the lifeboat station, while others swore at crew members when asked to move to let the lifeboat launch.
The secret’s out
A busy Bank Holiday weekend in Northumberland has prompted renewed calls for the A1 to dualled.
Conservative councillor Guy Renner-Thompson said: “The A1 was mental. People were waiting 30 to 40 minutes to get out of some of the junctions. I went down to Beadnell beach and there were sun loungers and wind breakers as far as the eye could see. I have never seen it so busy – it was crazy all weekend.
“We need to reverse the decision and dual the A1. The Government needs to recognise how busy it can get here. “Northumberland isn’t a secret anymore.”
His plea was echoed by businesses in Longframlington who said more traffic comes through the village when the A1 is busy.
A big Big Weekend
Twenty one years after BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend last rolled into Sunderland with the swaggering company of Foo Fighters, Gwen Stefani and The Black Eyed Peas, the festival returned to Wearside at the weekend. And it was nothing short of glorious across the board.
Across three unbelievably sunny days, around 100,000 people descended on Herrington Country Park armed with bucket hats, iced coffees, factor 50 and enough glitter to keep the North East sparkling well into autumn.
Sunderland securing European football over the same weekend only added to the many reasons to celebrate. Sam Wonfor has more.
A quick word
Visitors were seen squatting in bushes after the public toilets in the Northumberland village of Craster were closed again for repair work. The parish council has called on the county council to fully refurbish the inconvenient conveniences. Durham council leader Andrew Husband has called for a review of “overly permissive” planning policy wording after a large solar farm near Burnhope was given the go-ahead despite hundreds of objections and a High Court appeal. Newcastle’s adult social care provision has been rated as requires improvement. The Care Quality Commission also found that the city has many unpaid carers who said their role was having a negative impact on their health. The first osprey chicks of the year have hatched at Kielder Forest with all eight monitored nests having eggs in them for the first time. Michelin-starred Northumberland restaurant Pine is to open a live-fire cooking restaurant at the soon-to-be-opened Freight Island in Newcastle. Pyr will be launched by chef-owner Cal Byerley and head chef Ian Waller with the same sustainable ethos and an emphasis on local produce. David Lindsey, the manager of Middlesbrough Theatre since 1999 has announced he will retire in July. He said his greatest achievement was “keeping the theatre afloat in the face of ever increasing budgetary pressures and under constant threat of closure”. Northumberland National Park will celebrate its 70th anniversary this year with a walking festival, a programme of guided walks featuring routes covering wildlife, geology, history and traditional land use, all led by volunteers. The Malmaison hotel on Newcastle’s Quayside has undergone a £3.5m refurbishment with all 122 rooms redesigned and renovated in a style described as bold, vibrant and contemporary. Street art which has transformed an underpass in Byker has been tagged with graffiti just a day after its unveiling. Tributes have been paid to Corbridge businessman Roger McKechnie, the co-founder of snack brand Phileas Fogg, who has died aged 84. Before launching the Consett-based company he rose from marketing manager to MD of Tudor Crisps. He later became one of the founders of the Hexham-based Samling Institute for Young Artists.
Mick the unsung hero
This year’s Music Producers Guild (MPG) awards saw the Unsung Hero trophy go to Generator’s Mick Ross for his “invaluable behind-the-scenes contribution” in bringing talent from the North East to the world.
Newcastle No.9 up for sale
A ‘lost’ life-size figure which marked Newcastle United’s first FA Cup win 116 years ago has resurfaced - and is up for sale at auction. The 6ft 4in figure with No.9 on his back and inscribed with the winning score, has come from the estate of a Newcastle fan, but its original function and where it has been for most of a century is a mystery. It will be put under the hammer on June 4 by Newcastle auctioneers Anderson & Garland, with an estimate of £800-£1,200, as Tony Henderson reports.
Business bites
An expansion of Heathrow could mean a resumption of direct flights to Teesside International Airport, according to research by Frontier Economics. Wealth management group Fairstone has accelerated its development by acquiring eight companies in the first quarter of the year, adding more than £2 billion of client assets under management. The four screen agencies who make up Screen Alliance North, including North East Screen, have secured a £2.3m share of BFI funding to support training and development in the film and TV industry. North East-based OddBalls, known for its bright and colourful designs of men’s and women’s underwear, pyjamas and socks, is looking for international growth after securing investment from Alcuin Capital Partners. Hellens Group and Homes England have appointed Lovell to build the first phase of housing at Burtree Garden Village, a housing and regeneration scheme on the outskirts of Darlington. Major Sunderland employer Vantec has rebranded as Logisteed UK. MD Martin Kendall said: “It’s incredible to think that a business that started out operating from a competitors facility as a logistics supplier to Nissan in the early days of its life here in Sunderland is now part of a global group, creating hundreds of jobs in Sunderland and across the UK.”
1996 ad break
Michel Gondry is a genius who I hadn’t heard of. He started making inventive music videos after studying art in Paris and playing drums in a band. One of his videos was seen by Björk, who commissioned him to produce Human Behaviour, which earned him a Grammy Award nomination in 1994.
He became one of the most influential music‑video directors of the MTV era, working with The White Stripes, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, and Radiohead, and branched out into the world of cinema and advertising - he directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005.
He also helped develop early forms of “bullet time” - a technique later popularised in The Matrix. If you don’t know what “bullet time” is, you will after watching this 1996 Smirnoff commercial.
I may well bring you more of Gondry’s work now that I have discovered it - he has directed major campaigns for Gap, Nike, Coca‑Cola, Adidas, Polaroid, and Levi’s.
THE WIDER VIEW
The kindest lie
By Harry Pearson
On 30th May 1944, two Spitfire IXs of 127 Squadron RAF took off from Lympne to search for enemy shipping along the coast between Ostend and Dieppe. It was just past 4pm, the sun was shining and there was light haze hovering above the horizon.
The leader of the mission was Flying Officer Ian Campbell in Spitfire ML196. His comrade in ML234 was a third year warrant officer from Teesside. He had a mop of blond hair and a sharp, cynical sense of humour honed by his pre-war profession as a journalist on the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. He’d joined the RAF aged 20, served in 127 squadron in the Middle East, patrolling the skies above Egypt, Iraq and Cyprus and providing escort for Winston Churchill during the Teheran Conference.
On 31st March 1944, 127 Squadron redeployed from St Jean, Palestine to the UK in preparation for Operation Overlord. They arrived home on 22nd April and reported for duty at the start of May.
In the desert they’d been flying Hurricanes, at North Weald in Essex they were re-equipped with Spitfire IXs. The pilots had a little over a fortnight to get used to the new aircraft. They practiced dive-bombing, tested the cannons and the browning guns; flew squadron and wing formations. On 14th they moved to their permanent base in Kent. Combat operations began six days later with a low level sweep over Cayeux. The pilot of ML234 strafed a German motor torpedo boat and reported: “light amount of accurate flak”
On 24th May, 127 Squadron attacked railway yards near Douai. The warrant officer was his usual sardonic self, “1x500lb bomb used- uneventful” he noted in his logbook. Clearly the word uneventful has a different meaning in wartime. Two days later after dive-bombing targets in Bonnetot, his best friend Flight Sergeant Arthur White (inevitably nicknamed “Chalkie”) was hit by anti-aircraft fire near the V-1 rocket base in Le Treport and ditched in the Channel five miles off Dieppe. Royal Navy Sea Rescue picked him up half-an-hour later in a Walrus seaplane.
On 30th May, a little over 30 minutes into their mission, the two Spitfires wheeled above the mouth of Ostend Voorhaven and headed south past Middelkerke. The Luftwaffe had a major base at nearby Koksijde, but it had just been heavily bombed by the Americans and no fighters flew up to greet them.
The aircraft dropped low over the mouth of the river Ijzer towards the seaside resort of De Panne. Beneath them were the defences of the Wehrmacht’s Atlantic Wall. Dense batteries of 88mm and lighter anti-aircraft guns lined this section of the coast.
The artillery crews were on a permanent state of high alert. Muzzle flashes popped amidst grey concrete, shells exploded spurting steel and dark smoke across the blue skies. In aerial combat a pilot might put faith in his skill, experience, coolness and speed of mind, but flying through flak was a lottery in which the prize was survival. You either got hit, or you didn’t. Shrapnel might pass through the plane with no effect, or ignite a fuel tank, smash the propeller, or blow a hole in your skull.
Flying at low levels left little time to bail out, and even if you could the odds of being sliced apart by the tail plane were high. You could bring everything you had to the table, but in the end the only one of them that mattered was luck.
The aircraft crossed the French border near Dunkirk to a welcoming fanfare of machine-gun and cannon fire. F/O Campbell radioed his comrade. He got no response. Circling back the senior officer scanned the area. He saw nothing. Spitfire ML234 had disappeared without trace. Just after 17.30 ML196 landed safely at Lympne. F/O Campbell reported. ML234 was listed as missing.
The blond pilot, John Pearson, was the second of four brothers from Marske by the Sea. The youngest of them was my father. Dad’s eldest brother was also a flier, in the Fleet Air Arm. He had joined the FAA immediately war was declared, flown Swordfish torpedo bombers in the Norwegian Campaign, at Taranto and Mers-el-Kebir. Later he’d commanded 893 Pursuit Squadron flying Grumman Martlets from the deck of HMS Formidable. In May 1944 he was back in England serving with 155 (G.R) Wing at RAF Manston on the Kent coast.
A week after my uncle was reported missing his mother and father received a letter from their eldest son. On hearing news of what had happened to his brother, he wrote, he had taken a FAA Seafire and flown over the area where John’s plane had last been seen. He had observed oil and aircraft wreckage in the sea several miles off the French coast near Dunkirk. Swooping down to deck level he had identified the crashed aircraft as Spitfire ML234. No shipping was in the vicinity. No rescue had been made. There was, therefore, no other conclusion, he wrote, but that his brother was dead.
My uncle would go on serving as an FAA test pilot until he was killed in a flying accident in 1946. When his widow died in the 1990s, Dad inherited the memorabilia of his brother’s flying career. In 2000 he wrote a monograph on the wartime service of the two brothers. He pieced together their movements from logbooks and diaries, magazine articles and reference books, by writing to veterans associations and corresponding with the few former pilots who were still alive.
There was just one thing. When my father checked his eldest brother’s logbook for that fateful day of 30th May there was no entry about the Seafire flight to search the Belgian coast for ML234. Instead there were a few short flights from Manston to nearby Hawkinge and back ferrying senior officers from Coastal Command in a Stinson Reliant as the final preparations for D-Day were made.
If it’s not in a pilot’s logbook then it didn’t happen, Dad said.
His eldest brother was an experienced senior naval officer. The pilots who had served under him spoke not only of his capabilities as a flier but of his empathy as a man. He had insight and wisdom, a paternalistic sense of the duty of care. Fifty years after the events, my father concluded that the letter home had been a fabrication created to spare his family from the eroding cruelty of hope; to save them from the uncertainty that chewed up the lives of so many families of the missing.
His lie was an act of kindness in a savage time.
Harry Pearson is a former columnist for The Guardian and is a regular contributor to the magazine When Saturday Comes. His book The Far Corner: A Mazy Dribble through North East Football is widely regarded as a cult classic. The above link will take you to a beautifully written story by him about dealing with a loved one who has dementia.
Who said that?
No one who has followed political journalism closely in recent decades could fail to have noticed a curious development - the number of anonymous quotes that appear in political stories has risen to a near industrial scale.
This tradition has a noble history, epitomised by arguably the greatest political scoop of all time, the Watergate scandal. The key to nailing the story by Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein famously came from their ‘Deep Throat’ source.
But that is not how anonymous quotes are used by political journalists in Britain today, says political commentator Peter Oborne in the Byline Times. He highlights an admission by Times parliamentary sketch writer Tom Peck made in an interview on BBC radio with Armando Iannucci.
“With the rise of social media with its fruity language and constant controversy, political journalists are under ever increasing pressure from their bosses to make their reports more lively and colourful,” he writes.
“They are urged to litter their reports with comments such as ‘one Cabinet Minister told me…’ to give the impression, accurately or not, that they have inside information. It has led to a kind of arms race, where, scandalously, honest and ethical political journalists who do not indulge in this Spanish practice, appear tame and uninformed.”
It is all so different in Trumpland, as amazing as that may seem right now.
“As any British political reporter who has written for a respectable US publication knows very well, editors across the pond demand that we name and hand over the sources for anonymous quotes. And then their fact-checkers ring them up.
“Anybody who cares about integrity in public life (and political journalism is an important part of the public sphere) owes Tom Peck and Armando Iannucci a debt of gratitude for raising a sensitive subject that many in the Westminster media would rather avoid.”
Licence to chill
If, like me, you enjoy a Magnum when the sun is shining then we have Roger Moore to thank. According to The Knowledge, the former James Bond star was asked decades ago in an interview who he would most like to meet and what question he’d ask them. He replied that it was Mr Wall, of Wall’s ice cream, and that he’d ask why his company had never put a choc ice on a stick to make it easier to eat. The firm apparently sent him a prototype before launching the product in 1989.
And finally
I’m aware that I visit media websites far more than most people and am therefore subjected to far more of those clickbait headlines that sit below the main articles - but have any of you tried drinking olive oil for a month or know anyone who has?
for the purpose of science shall I conduct the experiment? Will it dissolve belly fat and make me live to 100 like the clickbait claims? Maybe only if I to T'ai Chi every day too.
I drink a shot glass of good quality olive oil most mornings and have done for at least a year