Hartlepool: the not so independent council
Is there any discernible difference between UKIP, the Brexit Party and Reform UK?
Author: Julia Mazza
Julia Mazza grew up in Middlesbrough, the descendant of Irish Famine refugee ironworkers and a Tyne shipyard union organiser. She is in awe of how the North East industrial workers, enduring intense hardship, still managed to create a formidable labour movement. Retired after a career in campaigns and commercial and policy research, she now lives in London
Russians, Tories and the North East
Fedotov is former head of a subsidiary of Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil company. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently reported on a 2008 review by Russian state pipeline enterprise Transneft, of huge commissions charged by contractors during construction of the US$4 billion Siberia-Pacific pipeline. Fedotov was Chair of two companies thought to have benefitted – VNIIST and IP Network, but his name was never mentioned in the inquiry and no charges were brought. The review was revealed by opposition figure and Novichok survivor Alexei Navalny.
Our mam’s recipe: when it’s scone it’s scone
After a hike through a biting north wind, eat your scone hot and soaked in butter and topped with raspberry jam. Wash it down with a few cups of your favourite tea, as you watch a winter afternoon fade into dark.
Lindy Delapenha: Boro’s Jamaican legend
Delapenha turned down a transfer offer from Manchester City to stay with his wife-to-be, local schoolteacher Joan Crawford. The decision endeared him to the fans. He was always popular, but there was a racist undercurrent, and with any minor mistake the racial epithets would fly. Remarkably it didn’t put Lindy off his game.
Our mam’s recipes
It was a huge steaming rectangle, not the small buns of the Godless South, that she’d cut into wedges and we’d smother in thick gravy. Only after we’d polished off the pud would come the roast.
Seven blue bricks: a year on for the red wall Tories
It’s been a year since the seven Blue Bricks took their seats in the House of Commons. How have they fared?
Up the Boro: North Korea and Middlesbrough Ladies Football Club
In the last two decades of diplomacy, perhaps the most successful move to thaw frozen relations has been a Friendship Tour to the secretive state by Middlesbrough Women’s Football Club.
Carbon capture: where there’s green there’s gold
Then there’s the politics. Tees Valley’s Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen has claimed ownership of the CCUS idea, a handy way of shoring up support for his new mayoral role. The South Tees Development Corporation has no Labour representatives on its board. After the May 2019 local elections of the five member councils – Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Darlington – the Labour Party controls no council outright.
The lost story of the Caribbean miners
We have to ask, if this missing chapter was uncovered purely by coincidence, what else has cultural amnesia airbrushed from history?
Dominic Cummings: made in the North East?
Cummings followed the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) with two easy, false arguments: the money spent on more politicians could be spent on doctors; and the Assembly would raise Council Tax. In hindsight it could be Brexit: The Prequel.
The North East’s last slave owners
The scale of slavery was matched only by the owners’ double standards. Like the anti-slavery campaigner James Mather of South Shields who, in a feat of moral contortionism, lodged a claim on behalf of his slave-owning wife, Grace Ainsley. He received £2,469 for 121 slaves at their plantations in Jamaica.
How will Baroness Fox vote?
As the House of Lords takes its seats for the new session of Parliament, we can expect the 36 new peers to have their ‘formal introduction’ to the chamber over the next few weeks, after which they can take part in debating and passing legislation. The question is, how will the new Baroness vote? As […]