Mayors, mistakes and mistrust

"It's so hard to find objective information you can trust, so I am delighted to have found Eyes and Ears, thank you Brian"

Key to growth

Mayoral Development Corporations are not new and there are not that many of them - yet - but they hold the key to delivering the economic growth that Prime Minister Keir Starmer so badly needs.

Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram, speaking to The i Paper, said legislation gives MDCs extensive powers over everything from buying up land and property, to building specific infrastructure.

He said he is in regular contact with mayors of all parties about MDCs and that “everyone” is now looking at them as a way to make an impact. The advantage is that they “give confidence to the market” that a regeneration scheme will go ahead.

Tees Valley already has two - in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool. And the article says plans for further MDCs are progressing fast in the North East under Kim McGuiness and in the West Midlands under Richard Parker.

Asked if Starmer should fear his Labour mayors or embrace them, Rotheram said: “If I wanted to say something to Keir, believe me, I can pick the phone up to him and tell him. But I’ll just turn it round. I think we are a resource as mayors that can articulate Labour values and principles and deliver those things more quickly than national government.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister will use an event tomorrow, marking 18 months in office, to reassure voters and Labour MPs that he is taking action on the cost of living.

Where’s the trust?

What is it with The Telegraph and the National Trust? The headline above caught my eye. Then I read the article and realised that the headline writer must have carried on regardless of what the Trust - and the amateur proof reader himself - said in the article.

The reporter quotes a Trust spokesperson: “We can say that no-one would be told they were no longer welcome as a volunteer simply for pointing out grammatical errors on a website and this would not lead to relationship breakdown. Relationship breakdown tends to occur after a series of incidents.”

The “incidents” in this case happened after Mr Jones felt his “dossier of thousands of misspellings and factual errors” was being ignored. No one likes being ignored. But the report goes on to say: “Mr Jones admitted to The Telegraph that his comments were not appropriate but claimed that he was stressed at the time as he was suffering from stage-two prostate cancer.”

Sadly, and all too predictably, the ‘headline news’ is what was seized on by many people on social media - and also by some other media outlets who either didn’t read the whole article or need to do some English comprehension revision.

At least some people saw through it…

Staff search begins

Compensation payments totalling £1.8 billion have already been paid to more than 2,700 people affected by the infected blood scandal.

Now the Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA), which is based in Newcastle, is looking for 250 more staff to join the 600 already employed at the offices in Benton Park View.

Over 30,000 NHS patients were given blood or blood products contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C between the 1970s and early 1990s. Some 3,000 people have died as a result of what the Government described as an “injustice that has spanned decades on an unprecedented scale”.

Alix Crabtree, deputy director of data operations at IBCA, said the authority is reaching a pivotal phase in designing, developing and expanding the compensation service.

Saturday jobs

Former Darlington MP Alan Milburn says the decline of Saturday jobs is one of the reasons why young people are not ‘work ready'. He currently leads a government investigation into the causes of record youth unemployment and inactivity among 16–24‑year‑olds.

Platform closed

One of the platforms at Jesmond Metro station is going to be closed for a couple of weeks after it was damaged by one of the new trains in an “isolated incident”. It’s a busy station and is widely used by pupils of the Royal Grammar School who return this week.

It’s a date

The dates for the next Newcastle Restaurant Week have been set for Monday January 12 to Sunday the 18th. More than 100 restaurants have signed up to offer menus at the discounted prices of £15, £20 or £25 per person.

Rachel Fenwick, head of marketing and events at NE1, said: “Dates for Newcastle Restaurant Week are always a closely guarded secret, but once they’re announced, bookings go crazy.”

Secret dining at SJP

Talking of food, who remembers the Secret Diner? I introduced his weekly column of foodie news and searingly honest reviews to The Journal when I was Editor, and it quickly became a must-read part of the newspaper.

Michelin-starred chef Kenny Atkinson said: “Love him or hate him, every business that has been reviewed by the Secret Diner will have its own opinion of him, whether they get a great review or a verbal slating. My opinion is that without doubt the Secret Diner is helping raise the level of our North East dining scene by the brutal honesty of his dining experience.”

Secret Diner has been away for some time. But he’s back - and we recently enjoyed hospitality together at Newcastle United. What did he make of the food in the Rooftops, one of the newest hospitality spaces at the stadium? I’ll let you know in Friday’s edition.

Fit for business

Steph McGovern with David Fairlamb

Presenter and business journalist Steph McGovern is opening a boutique fitness studio in Jesmond tomorrow with fitness guru David Fairlamb.

VersaClimbers have been a part of David’s North Shields gym for several years which is where Steph first encountered them - and set the two talking about a business proposition.

The result of those discussions is ClimbAhub which offers high-energy, instructor-led 30-minute classes, immersive lighting, and music-driven sessions using silent-headphones.

“In the five years David’s been training me, I’ve gone through all kinds of fitness phases,” said Steph. “His sessions helped get me to the final of the Netflix show Bear Hunt. At the other extreme, he also helped me recover from a badly broken arm. I’m confident that people of all fitness abilities will love these sessions as much as I have.”

Hidden art

Surprised to learn that only 11% of Sunderland’s £10m art collection was on public display in December. Following a Freedom of Information request, Councillor Beth Jones told the BBC that the council plans to display more artwork through roadshows and special events while it expands its galleries.

Big plans

British Engines has lodged proposals with Newcastle City Council to build a high quality manufacturing facility on a derelict section of the Parsons Works at Shields Road in Byker.

A home for a house

Edie Miller at her photoshoot

A small part of a disused office block which is being demolished as part of the work to take down the crumbling Gateshead flyover became a rather unusual, and very weighty, stocking filler this year.

Edie Miller and her partner Tom used to cycle past Computer House every day and Tom had once remarked that all he wanted for Christmas was the sign on the outside of the building.

Edie took up the story of what happened next on Twitter (@ediemmill) with a thread she posted on Christmas Day. It involved contacting contractors, dealing with some PR professionals and agreeing to some publicity photographs being taken.

“So on a rainy Wednesday night in December, I left work and took my gay little trolley that I usually use to collect surplus food for the community supermarket I run, and stomped down to Computer House,” she wrote.

And here is her Tweet showing the restored sign in its new home.

Good - but not so good

There are 5.3m people in the UK prescribed statins or other cholesterol‑lowering medication. I know one of them very well. Two if you include my mother.

There’s ‘good’ cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol and I’ve always been rather relieved to have more of the good stuff… until I read a piece in The Economist that says having lots of the supposedly good variety is not such a good thing after all.

“What led me to write about cholesterol was an encounter with ‘cholesterol denialists’, a fringe group that includes some doctors,” says health-care correspondent Slavea Chankova.

“These sceptics of the link between cholesterol and heart attacks have the ear of Robert F. Kennedy junior, America’s health secretary. Rigorous scientific evidence is not on their side, I concluded after a deep dive into the matter, labyrinthine biology and all.”

Respect the silence

Mental health services and support initiatives increasingly target men with messages about “opening up”.

But Tom Yarrow, Professor of Anthropology at Durham University spent over four years working closely with volunteers at a heritage railway in the North East, observing their everyday interactions, and talking to them about their friendships.

His article ‘Heritage railway volunteers show how deep friendships can be formed without discussing emotions’ suggests that this narrative misses something crucial about how connection actually works.

“What might look like emotional inarticulacy is actually a deliberate ethic of care,” he says. “These men aren’t unable to discuss feelings. But often they choose not to, viewing these silences as a way to respect the autonomy and privacy of others.

“Rather than dismiss their approach as ‘repression’, I argue in a forthcoming paper that we need to appreciate how people can develop intimate and caring relationships, without naming emotions.”