i'm in agreement with most of what's been written. it's easy for alleged comedians on radio 4 to make it the butt of their jokes, but the unfavourable opinions almost always come from people who've never been. on the other hand, perhaps possible low expectations help with those who do visit for the first time and love it. most non-locals who have been think it's great.
Whenever my home counties, 'cultured' in-laws are up for a visit their weekend isn't complete without a night out in Hull, they've done Old Town and Prinny Ave and loved both - easy converts.
Hull's gone far too posh...This City of Culture lark has taken the hard image off, but granted you're always likely to find a smack head/ pisshead around the entrance to Paragon Station or some gob-****e gobbing off. Just like anywhere else then.
As far as I can remember prejudice about the City Of Hull has been rife, derided, mocked, by both the media and those who have never been near to the place or may have stayed for a day or so. I don't expect anything else, it’s as if its own population don't know that we have faults, and don't get me started on the derision from the pompous neighbour of Hull, the East Riding. We are never going to be a Liverpool (not in the football sense although that may be true) or Manchester or even Leeds, as the level of investment in the area is determined by our geographical location. We struggle to get any major infrastructure improvements in either road or rail, Humberside airport (which I quite liked) is a shadow of it’s former self, all this whilst we had 2 cabinet ministers, including a deputy prime minister, in a Blair government (sorry politics). If nothing happened when that was the situation then there is basically no hope of much improvement in the future.
I can say with considerable certainty that John Prescott has ****ety-**** all to do with Hull’s image. Cretinous shoe horning in of politics there.
the first time i went to bristol i knew nothing about the place. i was expecting just another vaguely post-industrial city. i was surprised at the differences between northern cities and bristol. eventually i worked out the main reason for the differences.
My Dad used to talk about this very subject, 40 years ago. People who had never been here and especially the media, talked of a dump. One fella who loved this City, after hearing so many bad things about us was Terry Neill. He loved it here and couldn't understand what the bad press was about. Now I have three Nieces living in London and all three have had occasion to defend Hull when in company. "Oh God no, Hull?, it's a ****hole", or some such. To which the girls always replied with attitude, 'Have you ever been?' Answer? "Well no but...".
A woman I’ve worked with for years was telling me a few months ago about how crap Hull was and so I played the ‘Have you ever been?’ card and of course she hadn’t. So I started... Turned out that her Da was a trawlerman out of North Shields in the 60s and 70s. I focussed my tales on The Triple Trawler tragedy, which she was completely unaware of. At the end she was a snivelling wreck - grieving for her old man, a lost way of life and 58 people she never knew. It’s not about whether somewhere is crap or not, it’s about people.
The infrastructure point is an important one, creaky slow trains from Doncaster have been the experience for many over the years. I've even seen people quote Philip Larkin poems to disparage Hull. The idea that it's 'out in the sticks' is a nonsense if you look at the distance from the central spine of the country.
I moved to a place 5 miles from where I grew up, which was and is rarely visited by anyone I grew up with, mainly due to both places going to totally different schools, playing in different football leagues etc. (just across county borders) Despite over the past couple of decades all the old estates being levelled and huge amounts of investment being put in, most people I know are still like 'why do you live there, proper ****hole that'. Most of them do live in genuine dives where house prices are between 50%-75% of what they are here and have probably set foot here no more than twice in their lives. Reputations take a long time to shake off. Edit: actually to give a bit more detail, where I now live used to be a miners village. This is obviously going back a long time, I've no doubt the place was a proper **** hole back then, but the mine shut some time in the 1920's, so this reputation it has has lingered from probably great great grandparents to my generation and is still going strong today. The village now has the highest council tax rate out of any town or village in the parish/borough/district whatever it is. And this is a reputation that has survived as close as 5 miles down the road, Hull has this reputation around the entire country, and people will say things and others will believe it, and on and on it will continue.
That's what so many don't get about Hull, Ernie. Well that and the Marina and Big Muddy and the Bridge and the free museums...
I know for a fact that when Kirsty Allsop and her sidekick ( Phil Spencer) ? came to Hull to do Location,Location they deliberately asked for the keys to the cheapest house on the estate agents books. At the time the same estate agent had some beautiful properties for sale but they didn't want to know about them. It was a Channel 4 hatchet job on the city when it could have been just the opposite. I haven't seen Alllsop do a similar hatchet job on any other town or city and I don't think she's been to Hull since.
The wealth of Liverpool and the wealth of Bristol are broadly speaking derived from similar trading sources - odd how differently they have fared over the years since.
Luton runs Watford close. Its the only city I have visited where the police followed four of us down the High Street, stopped and questioned us and then filmed us telling us we are not wanted in the area and risked arrest 'because you are drawing attention to yourselves' We were four ordinary blokes ( one a solicitor) no football colours, all sober and it was a mid week afternoon and all we were doing was looking for a pub, which there was none. This was 20 years ago.
To be fair to Luton, their ground has character the way you have to go through someone's house to get in. I don't think Hull gets a worse rap than the vast majority of places north of Stevenage; to the smarmy stand up comics they're all much of a muchness.
