If I am included in the part where ' and those who can see no wrong and think it is superior to everywhere else and can learn nothing from elsewhere and are dismissive of everywhere else' let me just say this. For 30 years I worked on a variety of building sites, and inevitably you got outsiders who would immediatey trash Hull as a ****hole, many never worked on the site for longer than a week. A lot of this was based on the available boozers, but none the less that was the impression that they went home with. On my many travels with Hull City AFC, yes to Norwich, Ipswich, London (no idea how many times) Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Bolton, Carlisle, Bristol, Derby, York, others that I can't remember at the moment, I also went to Old Trafford and St James Park, not with City though. And inevitably conversations got around to where I was from, and I always got the same response, a dump. Even stopping off on motorway cafes and meeting up with other travelling supporters from a different team it was the same response.
It was this that infuriated me more than anything, the perception of Hull through, from what I could see as sheer ignorance and believing everything written in the papers. As for Leeds, as a family and an individual, I passed through the place on the way to Otley to stay with relatives for more years than I care to remember, again the piss take. But Leeds was a dump compared to Hull in the 1950's, then the motorways happened, and investment followed, Hull was left lingering for any such improvements, much like today really, Castle Street comes to mind. And I have found that to always be the case, and I have also stood up for Hull wherever I have been, part of the truth, and I'm not banging the political drum here, is that we are a political nobody, until we suddenly become important in a by-election, hence we now have the Humber Bridge thanks to a bribe by Harold Wilson/Barara Castle. Then it was back to the political wasteland to where we still are. The City Of Culture thing was one the best things to happen to Hull in I don't know how many years, after years of the afterforementioned derision of Kingston Upon Hull we had a chance to show the country, and the World if you like, a different perspective.
Did it work? I think so overall, although it hasn't stopped those who stay for a couple of nights then write articles, which lets face, are the same as all that has gone before, but not all of them. There has been a change in perception of Hull, we lost a lot of industries, and I don't just mean WW2, I remember some person on the TV say that we lost a few hundrend fishermen's jobs, oh no, it was much more than that, skilled trades employed in the servicing and maintaing the actual trawlers and all the other things needed to run the industry, like radar, vanished. I can see its faults, and those are plentiful, not just the shut up shops, that is happening all over the country, yes I do a lot of National Coach Holidays so I get around a bit, but the delay in major projects and those that appear to get the go ahead are paired down to the minimum as if those in government say 'it's only Hull so don't pay too much for something'. I could go on but it may get boring, it may already be so, but so be it, I was born in Hull and proud of it whatever people say. Hull City AFC were my team when most of my mates were Black & White or Red & White, we could be a great team, but I am not qualified to argue on the many threads that discuss such matters. That is because I have stuck to my belief that I have no right too as I am not a regular attendee these days, in fact I don't go at all now, so I don't pay my money so I have no say, or to put it another way I don't put my money where my mouth is. That is for the many of you who still do.
