In population terms, Hull is 260,000, Holderness(beyond the city boundary to the east) 60,000, East Yorkshire(beyond the West and North boundary) 120,000(though you can knock off 30,000 for the Beverley Urban area if you like as they generally consider themselves to not be part of Hull), I'm ignoring the rest of the northern part of East Yorkshire of 90,000, as again they wouldn't consider themselves to be part of Hull. So, in population terms, over a third of the city of Hull is not actually considered in the figures. More importantly, the third who live outside of the boundary, probably account for two thirds of the wealth in the city. As a consequence, the schools and facilities in these area are much better and by leaving them out of all these league tables(but including them in other city's figures) they become completely distorted and don't accurately reflect the real situation. It gets irritating for us, because people who have no idea what they're they're talking about, repeat this misleading bollocks on football message boards.
I quite like East Yorkshire overall including Hull; However Hull is a city of two halves East & West. West is the quite an affluent area, whilst East Hull is more effluent. Hull suffers from its location on the edge of Yorkshire; however it is an important Yorkshire connection to Europe. As a Yorkshire man I don't like to see any parts of our county slated. The problems occur when certain folk from East Hull still have a chip on their shoulder and believe that they are from Humberside. Whoever decided to build the Bransholme estate consigned Hull to the misery of coming last on these surveys. Leeds is no paradise in parts. Chapeltown, Little London, Halton Moor, Gipton, Withers, Middleton, Seacroft etc. all have their own problems. But in Leeds they are divided evenly across the City (North, South, East & West). But before we keep point scoring: Did Leeds or Hull join in the recent riots? No. Will we see any investments? No. Our tax money will keep been invested in Liverpool, Manchester, London and Birmingham. These cities all have Metro systems. London and Manchester both have football stadiums built using public funds. Investment is constantly kept from our two Cities, so instead of questioning why we are better than each other, perhaps we should ask Parliament why we don't deserve the same level of support and services as Manchester, London etc.
Good post. Though for the record, I never suggested that Hull was better than Leeds, I merely pointed out that this article was based on bum information and Hull is nowhere near one of the worst places to live in the UK. As you say, Hull is a city of two halves, much of east of the city is made up of grotty council estates, but most of the west(most of which is excluded from the figures quoted) is as good as any other place in the UK.
The worst city I've been to is Leeds by a mile. The only reason I say this is because i was egged whilst recruiting for the army, which was nice!
Clearly none of you have ever been to Scunthorpe. Not a city as such, but clearly one of the biggest ****holes in the country, populated by fat, stupid, ignorant lowlives. Of the cities, Hull has a decent railway, waterfront, Marina, old town and plenty of shops and some nice shopping malls. The people are okay, better than those in Scunthorpe. The Hull housing is where it gets let down. The council estates are not restricted to east Hull, they stretch across most of it. And please don't include Beverley, it's 10 miles away. Most large cities have good centres and at least pockets of very bad housing but Hull has more bad housing than most. Its hardly the worst place to live in the country though.
I feel sorry for Scunny, all that you say is true, but the poor buggers have had a hard time. Unemployment is at ridiculous a level(due to the demise of the steel industry) and it a depressing place to go to, there's just no money there at all. Most towns and city's have poor and affluent areas, but unfortunately, Scunny seems to be one of the only places that just has the poor. I know a director at Scunny and said that even their own directors car park was full of **** cars and every luxury car that ever appeared in their car park belonged to the opposition.
