Eyes & Ears 03.01.25
It's what you've been missing
Davie Laws: 1957-2025
The former chief exec of Newcastle International Airport, Davie Laws passed away on New Year’s Day. He was 67.
Davie, a qualified football referee, was a trainee fireman at the airport and rose through the ranks to become CEO in 2006, a position he held for 10 years. He was also president of the North East Chamber of Commerce for two years.
James Ramsbotham, who was chamber chief exec at the time said: “This is such devastating news. Davie was one of the best and we have lost a very special friend and North East ‘great’.”
Current CEO John McCabe said: “Davie was a lovely man. Time spent in his company was always fun and insightful. He was a great ambassador for the North East.”
Phil Forster, MD at Teesside International Airport, said: “Davie did so much for me, and his kindness, guidance, and unwavering support made an immense difference in both my personal and professional life. His generosity and commitment to helping others will never be forgotten and I feel privileged to have known him and to call him a boss, a mentor and, most importantly, an amazing friend.”
A year after leaving Newcastle in April 2016, Davie became chief exec of Leeds Bradford Airport. He retired in 2019.
From Georgian to Geordie
A lot of richly deserved tributes were paid to former US president Jimmy Carter after his death at 100 this week. His humanity and humility, and commitment to social justice and human rights were widely recognised
As ever, there was a Geordie link to the story, in particular his presidential visit to Newcastle in 1977 when he gave his ‘Howay the lads’ speech outside the civic centre, as PM Jim Callaghan looked on.
Fewer people will be aware of his follow up visit to the region 10 years later when he started the 4th of July, a date of huge significance to Americans, with a three-mile run around a Northumberland village, visited Hadrian’s Wall, took in a West Tyne League cricket match between Humshaugh and Wylam Second XIs and sampled Newcastle Brown Ale.
Thanks to a Twitter thread from @JamesOfNazareth and links to articles from The Guardian and the Hexham Courant, I learned he came to stay with chartered accountant Tony Coates and wife Jenny in Riding Mill through Friendship Force, an exchange organisation which the Carters helped set up in the 1970s.
The Guardian article is a wonderful piece of writing*. It does not say how many ‘broons’ were taken at the village pub, the Wellington, with Tony, who sadly died in 2018, but at a gala dinner later in the evening, the former president declared Newcastle to be ‘the capital of friendship’.
*The Guardian was commonly called the Grauniad for many years because of its typographical errors, and the caption writer in 1987 misquotes the former president in the Wellington as saying ‘give me a broom’.
Casey on the care case
The Government will set up an independent commission to recommend long-term reform to adult social care, it announced today.
The body, which will be led by former senior civil servant Baroness Louise Casey, will examine the key issues facing the sector before recommending changes designed to help achieve the Government’s ambition of creating a ‘national care service’ and based on a cross-party consensus.
The QT campaigned for change in the crisis-hit social care sector so this is welcome news. The downside of the announcement is the commission will not issue its final report until 2028, sparking concerns that the challenges facing the sector will deepen in the meantime.
A considerable upside is who is leading the commission. Baroness Casey has led several high-profile reviews, including into homelessness, the Rotherham child exploitation scandal and the Metropolitan Police. Her work has had a lasting impact on social policy and the lives of many vulnerable people.
New Year’s Honours
Double celebrations at the offices of the NewcastleGateshead Initiative after publication of the King’s New Year’s Honours List.
Chief Executive Sarah Green was awarded an OBE while chief operating officer Ian Thomas was made an MBE.
Former Darlington headteacher Calvin Kipling, who turned around the fortunes of a failing comprehensive, now known as Wyvern Academy, has been made an MBE. He is currently head of Darlington Visual School, improving outcomes for pupils who have experience of the care system.
Professor Greta Defeyter of Northumbria University was awarded an OBE. Her pioneering research into school breakfast clubs, meals and holiday activities over the past 20 years has benefitted millions of children across the country.
A retired gyneacologist, who countless parents have cause to thank, has been made an MBE. Alison Murdoch established the fertility clinic at the Centre for Life and led the debate nationally in terms of ethical, political and regulatory issues around embryo research.
Judith Hartley, 59, of Durham, who has worked for British Business Bank and its predecessor, Capital for Enterprise (CfE), for more than 14 years has been made an MBE. She helped launch the Start Up Loans Company and later became the first MD of the UK Network Team.
Actor Kevin Whately was awarded an OBE for his services to acting and to charity. Newcastle-born Anne Reid was made an MBE.
If you want to see a list of all the North East people named in the King’s New Year’s Honours List - and there are some remarkable ‘unsung’ heroes among them - then you can click on Chroniclelive or the Northern Echo website.
Profit and loss account
Just over four months ago, Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen celebrated Teesside International Airport making its “first profit in a decade”.
However, the airport’s annual accounts, released on Christmas Eve, showed a pre-tax loss of £6.62 million for the 12 months to the end of March 2024 - up from £4.45 million the previous year.
Turnover moved in the wrong direction as well, reducing from £15.58 million to £14.9 million, although this year’s figure is the second highest recorded in 10 years.
Tees Valley Combined Authority has provided a loan facility of £64.4 million for the airport hub and £23.6 million for Business Park South, and the Director’s Report says £89.6 million has been drawn down so far.
The profit celebration in August was sparked by EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) figures.
But the mayor recently told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “[Ebitda results] was a nice thing to happen, but I’m not overly shouting about it. We’re five years into a 10-year plan. What we need to do is completely refresh the next five years.”
If you are interested in knowing more then the Teesside Lead is a good place to start.
Profits down, dividends up
The latest accounts for Teesworks Limited show a massive slump in both revenue and profits. For the year to the end of March 2024, the company's turnover plummeted from £142.9 million to £22.2 million. The operating profit went from £67 million to £1.8 million.
Despite this, the company paid a dividend of £20.2 million to its shareholders, a big increase on the £3 million paid the previous year. The accounts also highlighted that investment decisions were delayed due to an independent review of the Teesworks project and the General Election.
Teesworks, Europe’s largest brownfield site, is being developed for a range of industrial uses including wind turbine manufacturing and carbon capture.
Full steam ahead
The Royal Mint has released a commemorative £2 coin to mark the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
Locomotion No.1 made the 26-mile journey on September 27, 1825. The release of the coin coincides with the start of a nine-month festival being held across County Durham and Tees Valley in 2025 to celebrate the birth of the modern railway.
Four other commemorative coins have been issued: a £5 coin to mark 125 years since the birth of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, a £2 coin to mark the 350th anniversary of The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, a 50p coin honouring the Red Arrows, and a 50p coin featuring stories of the Second World War.
Metros back on track
Metro trains are running again to all destinations after work to prop up part of the crumbling Gateshead flyover was completed. The temporary propping device has been in place for a few days and work to encase the pillar in more permanent concrete is expected to start soon.
Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon said: “Our longer-term plans remain to demolish the flyover completely and regenerate the area. To keep on repairing it is just putting off the inevitable and is likely to be more costly than demolition because repairing it will never overcome some of the basic 1960s design flaws.”
100 jobs go
Gateshead-based Virtuoso Doors, part of the Customade Group, is being wound down with the loss of 100 jobs. Administrators were able to sell parts of the group, saving 500 jobs, but Virtuoso Doors was not included.
Restructure as losses grow
Restructuring work is continuing at North Shields-based laminate maker Formica after the company reported a significant drop in sales and an increase in losses due to market decline.
Latest figures show that annual pre-tax losses grew from 11.5 million to £37.2 million and that turnover dropped by 22% to £44.8 million. Formica now only manufactures from the west part of their site and employee numbers have dropped by 38 to 282 - but the accounts show the firm has continued with investments to strengthen the business.
Dinosaurs will not be moved
Middlebrough Council has dropped plans to relocate Teessaurus Park, a 10-acre plot site hosting an array of steel dinosaur sculptures, to make way way for Gypsy and traveller pitches. More than 7,000 people had signed a petition against the proposal.
THE WIDER VIEW
The truth is still out there
In the latest edition of Byline Supplement, former BBC journalist Chris Morris, CEO of fact-checking charity Full Fact, discusses the challenges and implications of misinformation in the digital age.
In a Q&A with the online magazine, part of the Byline Times network, Morris:
emphasises that we are only 15 years into what he describes as a 100-year information revolution, with significant implications for truth and democracy;
highlights the increasing workload for fact-checking organisations due to the rise of generative AI tools, which make it easier to create misinformation on a large scale;
points out the alarming decline in public trust in politicians, with only 11% of people in the UK believing they can trust politicians to tell the truth (up from an all-time low of 9% last year);
notes that while scepticism towards traditional media is healthy, the pendulum has swung too far, leading to a multitude of narratives on social media.
I was struck by one of his comments about the relationship between the media and politicians: “The nature of politics and media coverage almost assumes distrust. If somebody changes their mind, the headline screeches "U-turn" – it's not presented as acceptable. Scientists change their mind when facts change, when evidence changes. Not every decision to change course by a politician should be portrayed as a U-turn.”
For richer for poo-er
In the Byline Supplement interview, Chris Morris was asked about Full Fact’s engagement with Twitter.
The short answer was very little. “I think our last engagement with them was probably a ‘poo’ emoji, their stock response at the time,” he said. Relationships with Google and Facebook are much better, I’m happy to report.
Twitter, of course, is owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. His wealth is reportedly in the region of $450-470 billion. It’s easy to forget just how great the difference is between a billion and a million.
As this Tweet highlights, if Musk was to go out and spend $1 million every day, it would take him 1,270 years to reduce his bank balance to zero.
Housing reform
If Elon Musk is serious about helping the UK then maybe he should consider bankrolling a council housing boom rather than making a hefty donation to Reform UK.
A poll by YouGov for the charity Shelter found that nearly two thirds of people with jobs living in private rented housing struggle to pay their rent. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said on Bluesky: “No other policy, achievable within a Parliament, would bring greater social and economic benefits.”
Many of us who remember what life was like before the Right To Buy scheme was introduced by the Thatcher government in the 80s will find it difficult to argue with him.
North East mayor Kim McGuinness puts tackling the social housing emergency high on her priority list for 2025.
Official figures show that the number of households on a waiting list for social housing across the wider region has jumped by 51%, from 50,453 in 2022 to 75,985 in 2023, an increase greater than any other region in the country.
“It is now really urgent that we get on with this,” said Ms McGuinness.
Even deadlier habit
New research from University College London has found that women lose 22 minutes of life for every cigarette they smoke while men lose 17 minutes. Previously it was estimated that each cigarette smoked reduced a life by 11 minutes.
No repeats for Dambusters
The Dambusters raid on German dams in 1943 has gone down in history as the ultimate combination of British ingenuity, skill and derring do, harnessing scientist Barnes Wallis’s idea to use bombs that bounced on water and putting them in the hands of a specially trained squadron of bomber crews led by Guy Gibson.
Wallis’s scheme succeeded and made for spectacular newsreel footage. Gibson and his men became instant heroes and were immortalised in a film with a theme tune which has become synonymous with British heritage and is still used in ceremonial and commemorative events to this day - and on some football terraces.
But eight of the 19 bombers never made it back and 53 of the 119 airmen were lost. It was a heavy price to pay. The dams were repaired within months, so the overall cost to Germany’s war effort was not as great as had been hoped.
As journalist and historian Tim Luckhurst, Principal of South College at Durham University, recounts in The Conversation, the Dambusters raid was a massive propaganda victory, a triumph of secret planning, precision accuracy and outstanding technology, carried out by heroes.
But the bouncing bomb was never used again.
Hiccup in A&E
Accident & Emergency units are dealing with a rising number of people seeking care for coughs, headaches and even hiccups, insomnia and backache. The figures also reveal an increasing number of people attending A&E to request medication.
Data from the NHS in England shows there was a 15% increase in A&E attendances for coughs from 322,500 in 2022-23 to 369,264 in 2023-24. Health officials estimate that up to two-fifths of A&E attendances are avoidable or could be better treated elsewhere.
Love letters page
I’ve said before that The Times has the best letters pages. I’ll end this week with another one from them:
Aude Fitzsimmons: “I can attest to the power of handwriting. My husband of 62 years and four months died a year ago. He remained my beloved until the end but I found that I couldn’t remember him as he was in his prime, which was distressing.
“During the Christmas break I found and reread the hundreds of letters we wrote to each other during our engagement: we lived in different countries, there was no internet, telephone was expensive and post was cheap.
“It is wonderful therapy and a great comfort. I can hear and almost see him as he was then and I find myself falling in love with him all over again.”
THE QT VAULTS
The day I drove Keegan Batty
A weekly highlight of The QT was reading Simon Rushworth’s column which lifted the lid on his 30 years in journalism. Here he recalls how a furious Kevin Keegan accused the very young Simon of trying to destroy David Ginola’s reputation - through a pun-filled article in the official club magazine, United!.
Ginola’s chuckle and Gallic shrug to the whole thing only infuriated the Newcastle manager even more and he barked: “He’s French, He doesn’t understand.”
A tearful Simon was marched out of the training ground in front of the assembled press pack and warned by Keegan that his job was on the line. Read on to find out how that turned out…