History lesson
No council tax to pay this month or next, but it won’t be long before this year’s bigger bills drop through our letterboxes.
Reform of the system is long overdue - MP Jonathan Brash, for instance, has repeatedly contrasted the high bills in his Hartlepool constituency to the lower bills paid in wealthier areas such as Westminster.
But change is unlikely to happen any time soon, as history tells us. Before the Council Tax was introduced in 1993, there was a system that caused people to take to the streets in protest - there were riots in several cities including Newcastle - and it began the downfall of the Margaret Thatcher government.
The Poll Tax.
William Waldegrave, the man behind the tax, wrote a chapter in his memoir saying it was ‘All My Own Work’, although he says it might not have been so bad had Thatcher listened to him about phasing in the change.
As writer and historian Philip Stephens says in a column for The i Paper, the Poll Tax has left a lasting legacy, for councils as well as taxpayers:
“The poll tax did more than bring down Thatcher,” he writes. “Though replaced by the Council Tax – a property-based levy based loosely on the rates system she had so despised – this colossal blunder accelerated the hollowing out of civic Britain.
“The Conservatives had been a party of town and village hall Britain – of local libraries, parks, municipal swimming pools, well-kept streets and civic pride. The poll tax and its successor permanently robbed councils of the right to raise revenue from businesses and to set taxes to meet local needs and ambitions.
“In Whitehall, the political trauma of the poll tax left any idea of further changes to local government finance on a shelf marked ‘never again’. So the flaws in the Council Tax – a limited number of property bands leave the most expensive too lightly taxed and the valuations on which it is levied have remained unchanged since the early 1990s – have gone unrepaired.”
The word on cuts
Talking of council finances, the shop inside The Word in South Shields will remain open after animator Sheila Graber collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition objecting to cost-cutting plans to close it.
South Tyneside Council said it had secured additional funding from the Government to continue to manage The Word shop for the next year and retain all current library opening hours.
Meanwhile, Northumberland County Council has begun a consultation on bringing together face-to-face staff teams from both libraries and customer services to create a new ‘libraries and information service’.
Up and running
The starting gun has been fired on the North’s bid to hold a future Olympics.
As we reported on Friday, a multi-party coalition of northern mayors and leaders has formally asked the Government to commit that any future UK bid for the Olympics be anchored in the North (Eyes & Ears 13.02.26).
Alexander Rose, a specialist public funding lawyer and partner at Ward Hadaway, has looked at the process that The Great North, chaired by North East Mayor Kim McGuinness, is following, including the legal issues that would flow from a successful bid.
He said: “The host cities will be expected to invest in infrastructure improvements, not only to deliver each of the events, but also to support the large number of visitors coming to watch them. In this situation, it seems highly likely that to deliver such infrastructure, the relevant Mayors would look to establish Mayoral Development Corporations.”
Bring it on.
Friends reunited
Thirty years to the day since its original broadcast, the Miners’ Strike episode of Our Friends in the North will be celebrated with a special Q&A screening in Newcastle.
Writer Peter Flannery will return to Tyneside Cinema alongside actor Christopher Eccleston on February 26 for what organisers describe as an unmissable evening reflecting on the legacy of one of British television’s most acclaimed dramas. Sam Wonfor has more in Cultured. North East.
Measured response
Talking of acclaimed dramas, the 2005 film Goal about a young South American footballer signing for Newcastle United can’t in all honesty be put in that category. It was pleasant enough and had the bonus (for me, at least) of featuring the brilliant Frances Barber as the club nurse.
She appeared in my social media this week after going to the theatre with a friend who had asked for a shot of vodka with ice. The bartender said it was against the law to have it without a mixer and gave her a vodka and cranberry juice.
“Is this now law?” she asked. The thread led to her revealing when and why she fell in love with Geordies.
Flying squad
Cleveland has become the first police force in the North to use drones as first responders (DFR) - they have already been used in 73 live incidents this year.
There are 59 pilots trained in the force. They can deploy drones in as little as 90 seconds to incidents such as searching for missing people, tracking vehicles or locating suspects. They can also be used during pre-planned operations.
A quick word
Radio 1 breakfast DJ Greg James is doing an eight-day 630-mile tandem ride from Weymouth to Edinburgh for Comic Relief. Day 6, on March 18, will see him travel from York, through County Durham, to Sunderland. Mayor Kim McGuinness’ Kids Go Free offer is back for the February half term, meaning up to three children aged 11 and under can travel for free on public transport in the North East when accompanied by an adult. Northumbrian Water has been named the UK’s top organisation for Capacity to Innovate in the respected Britain’s Most Admired Companies study, the the UK’s longest-running study of corporate reputation. The North East Chamber of Commerce has launched their 2026 Business Awards with some of the winners going on to represent the region in the British Chambers of Commerce Awards later in the year. Nissan is turning its financial performance around. The carmaker has reported a surprise profit in the third quarter and has changed its forecast loss for the year from £1.31 billion to £287m. The ruling Labour group on Sunderland City Council has called on the university to review the decision to close the National Glass Centre after new information has come to light. The Northumberland Line is already a huge success despite two stations not yet open. Passengers will be able to use Northumberland Park from February 22 and it has now been announced that Bedlington will officially open on March 29.
Welcome support
Durham Stick Makers, a community group dedicated to preserving the traditional craft of making walking sticks, canes and shepherds’ crooks, has received £1,836 from the Banks Community Fund to invest in specialist equipment and support future growth.
The group is the only one of its kind in the North East and currently has 35 members drawn from across the county and the wider region. Ages range from people in their twenties to those in their nineties, with plans now in place to grow membership to at least 50 over the next year.
Tony Henderson has the full story. It also provides the perfect opportunity to give you a link to a wonderful piece of writing from Michael Chaplin who examined the contents of his porch and told the intriguing tales of the walking sticks that have led him down the highway of life. It is a joy to read.
Recommended reads
“When I began teaching during the 1990s, the term ‘school readiness’ simply didn’t exist,” writes Dominic O’Regan in The Telegraph.
“Today, the reality is starkly different. Children arrive in nappies. They are unable to use cutlery. They try to ‘swipe’ books as if they were screens. A profound shift in modern childhood has fundamentally changed the rhythm and challenges of the classroom.”
“0.29p. Little more than a quarter of a penny. That’s how much our band receives each time a fan listens to a song of ours on Spotify, the world’s most used music streaming platform,” says Gareth David, lead vocalist of Los Campesinos!
Writing in The Observer, he published a breakdown of the streaming income earned from the Cardiff band’s most recent album All Hell. In its first year of release, the record received just shy of 9.5m streams across all platforms, amounting to a total payment of £31,940.29.
“Not a small sum, of course,” he wrote. “But it hardly felt like fair remuneration, especially when considering that in 2024, Spotify’s co-founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon cashed out more than £932m in shares.”
The article is a sober reminder to artists looking to make it big in the music business:
“Spotify doesn’t pay out directly to artists, it pays out to the rightsholder (likely a distributor or record label), with every stakeholder taking its slice of the pie before the artist gets whatever crumbs are left.
“Based on a traditional recording deal, around 20% is taken by the music’s digital distributor; the record label then takes 100% of the remaining related income up until the artist recoups any advanced monies, and around 80% thereafter. Then the artist manager invoices for their 20% commission from what’s left. Suddenly the £32,000 income I mentioned at the start of this article has become less than £5,000.”
Staying with music, and the theme of managers and young musicians… without wishing to sound smug, I have long known the answer to the pub quiz question: “What was the first song played on Radio 1? It was Flowers In The Rain by The Move.
The year was 1967. I was less certain of that, to be fair. It’s a bit before my time but they are the band in the headline above.
I don’t know too much about The Move, but three of the band went on to form the ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) and Roy Wood left them to start Wizzard - the group who gave us I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day (a song that never made No.1 because it was released in the same year as Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody).
The Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Winwood, Pink Floyd, they’re all in this lovely nostalgia-fest in the Birmingham Dispatch.
A New York Times article published about a decade ago has led to a widespread belief that if two people ask each other a specific list of 36 questions they will fall in love. On Valentine’s Day weekend, The Conversation decided to test the claim against the evidence. You can read the whole article here or go straight to the 36 questions here.