"The rest of the country should wake up to what it has been missing"
Plenty of links to interesting stuff again this week
On Good Friday, the Guardian concluded what we who live in the North East already know, that “the rest of the country should wake up to what it has been missing.”
In a lovely editorial, they wrote about the glories of the region being deserving of a wider audience.
But, as the Guardian piece says, there are fewer international visits to the North East than our neighbours in the North West or Yorkshire - so there’s a job to do.
There are efforts already underway to promote the region more effectively, including a Destination Development Partnership where destination and tourism leads work together across the seven local authorities of the new mayoral area.
I think one of the biggest challenges for the North East is finding a path to a single regional identity. That wouldn’t mean erasing the very important local identities people have, or forcing everyone who isn’t Newcastle to just do what Newcastle wants, but it would mean finding something that we all stand for and that other people can recognise as what we’re about.
There are lots of elements to that - a political figurehead, music and culture, sport, economic progress. But, how the region sells itself to visitors (and investors) is key to that too.
It has to be organic and authentic, so I’d say any opportunity you get to feed into that process, do it.
A bit of naval-gazing
I’ve mixed up the format of this newsletter a bit over the last few weeks, mostly due to time-pressures. That’s meant some shorter and some single-topic focused editions.
Engagement has been about the same, if anything a bit better than usual, so I thought I’d gather views…what do you think, dear reader?
Any additional feedback on what you like or don’t, what you want more or of less of, is also very welcome in the comments.
Some links
The Easter weekend is a quiet one for data releases, so just a few things to click through and look at.
A new report from Reform, a think tank which specialises in (as you’d expect) ideas around public service reform, calls for health functions to be passed down to devolved areas. They make the point that 86% of Department of Health and Social Care funding goes to NHS England to redistribute, and call for NHS England to be abolished and for more funding to get down to the regional level via mayors.
Another Guardian link, this time to some photographs which will feature in a new exhibition on the North East in the 70s and 80s. The exhibition is going to be in Bristol, which is fine, I guess, but you can see some of the photos here. Some of Chris Killip’s work is in the Laing’s permanent collection through, The Last Ships is brilliant if you haven’t been to look at it
Data on mid-year population estimates from the ONS - you can put your local area in to get the picture near you. Most places will follow the national pattern, where you can see how bulges in certain age groups are moving through the age brackets - there are more people aged in their 50s and 60s than ten years ago, and fewer in their 20s and 40s
In the FT, the excellent data reporter John Burns-Murdoch has looked at family friendly policies and whether they impact on birth rates. We’ve talked about this before in this newsletter, in relation to falling populations in certain parts of the North East. Do these policies work? No, is the conclusion, with other trends - including worry and anxiety - limiting how many children people are having. Includes this chart showing how parenthood (or not) by mid-30s has changed since the 1980s
The South Tees Development Corporation lost a high court case at the end of last week, against PD Ports, the Statutory Harbour Authority for the Tees. I won’t attempt to explain it here, because I’d get it wrong. You can read what Jen Williams from the FT has to say about it on Twitter
Jobs corner
Another shout out for the policy adviser role with HM Treasury. The listing says London, but you’d be able to work from Darlington on pensions policy. No previous policy experience necessary, I am told. Closing date is 7th April - full details here.
The QT corner
In last week’s edition of The QT, I wrote about how those of us in the political bubble needed to remember occasionally that the vast majority of people are not like us. I also said that we needed to make sure people were engaged in that mayoral election, and knew the candidates and what they stood for.
The QT’s editor Brian Aitken was at a mayoral hustings on transport issues last week, and wrote it up - read that here. He concluded of the two frontrunners - Jamie Driscoll and Kim McGuinness - that “the two former Labour colleagues appeared to me to be agreeing agreeably.”
In this week’s edition, you’ll find an interview I’ve done with Sean Soulsby, CEO of The Children’s Foundation where we talk about the value of youth work, and their baby box scheme in particular, which aims to give newborns the best possible start in the life. Check that out on The QT website from tomorrow lunchtime.
Pattern corner
Pattern’s networking and co-working day on the 25th April now has its speaker, and it’s a good one if you want to do what I just mentioned and get to know more about the mayoral election.
Kim McGuinness, Labour’s candidate for mayor, will be joining for a spell in the morning for a ‘watercooler chat’ with Chris Owens. You can still get your free ticket to the networking and/or the full day here.
Working with me
I’m grateful to be looking really quite busy over April and May - thank you wonderful clients and contacts!
But, I’m still keen to hear what’s going on with all of you. To chat about potential work, or just to find a time to catch up, you can reach me on arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk.
I assume all the serious candidates will be paying £5,000 to be included in the booklet of mayoral candidate statements. Will this have any impact on the odds? Outsiders always stand a chance when a good few voters are pissed off with the main parties, and I have done enough canvassing to know that people lie on the doorstep. Me, I am a Labour Party member but I will be voting Green in my mayoral election because in a mayoral election personality and charisma can trump Party🐰
Two lines are a little ironic here, I (paraphrase) “people inside the political bubble see things differently to the population in general” (true) and the “two front runners” in the mayoral election” (based on what evidence?). This is indeed a question of perception, because few outside the ‘bubble’ and the ‘engaged electorate’ know anything about the candidates (Wor Room last week or was it the week before) In a wide area election (about which I know a bit) few know anything but party allegiance and although the North East shares an identity of sorts and a media region it is a very different to GM, London, or the other ‘city regions’. Campaigning in what is, despite being England’s least populous region, still a small European country, is difficult to make any real impact as an individual. So it is not reasonable to assume that the ‘front runners’ in this election are anything other than Labour and Conservative. An independent candidate at a much more promising time came third in the smaller North of Tyne in 2019. Of course nothing is impossible and the campaign does matter, but the electoral maths at this stage are very clear - it is a Labour-Conservative contest with a disruptive third candidate whose chances of winning are very slim but whose limited profile could affect the result between the actual front runners.