... never mind those 300 billion planets.Not if you inhabit the Labour Party metro-bubble. Here's a front page from Labour List and they are reporting on how the party has just lost a council seat in its north-east heartland of a town called "the Brexit-backing city of Middlesborough" (sic) which, apparently, is in somewhere called "Teeside". It's the first time the Wickedtories have ever won this seat, they say.
Is this perhaps in one of Kev's 20 trillion parallel universes, where there's a river called the "Tee"? Could it be that the reason Labour loses these elections is because their metro-elite haven't a clue what and where these places really are, or what they are called?
Always nice to be taken seriously and valued. Maybe even visited once in a while, in a missionary sort of way. Some of that fine guacamole with my cod-and-chips, please.
ND
PS - speaking of delicious regional food: I am in Ireland at the moment and have been invited to indulge in what they proudly call the "Full Irish Breakfast". It is attractively advertised on my hotel menu with this picture. I think I'll have the porridge, actually.
Holiday Inn Express hardly qualifies as a hotel.
ReplyDeleteI bet you paid over 100 euros for it too. Dublin hotel prices are crazy for the capital of a country that has fewer people than half of London. If you have the time, much better and cheaper to stay in Belfast and take the train
I have relatives in Middlesborough. As Labour as they come. I haven't spoken recently but have a feeling that I'll be meeting up with them soon. (Three doses of Orimorph yesterday.)
ReplyDeleteOn the Irish Sausage - I think they swing to the Left in Ireland too.
What can you think of a political party which organised street parties to commemorate the death of an elderly lady (Margaret Thatcher). It's possible that even die-hard Labourites showed how disgusted they were by refusing to vote for those organisers. The best thing in Middlesbrough is the Transporter Bridge carrying you over to the other side of the River Tees.
ReplyDeletepen seive, the transporter bridge is worth using because it's an interesting piece of engineering and there aren't many left, but your relief at leaving Middlesbrough will be tempered when it deposits you in Haverton Hill, which is even worse.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be pedantic but I know from first hand experience that the inhabitants get a little irritated if you miss spell the name of their town; Middlesbrough.
ReplyDeleteCod??? North of Watford Gap, chips are served with Haddock!
ReplyDeleteEr, and mushy peas.
ReplyDeleteSausages!
ReplyDeleteThat sausage looks suspiciously like a horse's willy!
ReplyDelete@ 1:18 & 2:53
ReplyDeletePiss off, Mandelson.
Haverton Hill is indeed depressing, but go a little further and you get to a good nature reserve, with seals basking on mud banks; and a neat nuclear power station.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem with Middlesbrough is that it is off the A1 and the main East Coast railway line. This adds half an hour to a journey to anywhere.
Otherwise, it's a nice place to live. There are plenty of good houses at reasonable prices.
Don Cox
Remind me never to live in London.
ReplyDeleteDon - I have spent many a day on Teesside
ReplyDeleteYarm is nice. Liked to stay at the Crathorne - better class of sausage altogether
Yarm is nice.
ReplyDeleteYarm used to be home to Tall Trees, one of the best nightclubs in the UK. I reckon only Fabric was more impressive. It was a 45 miles each way trip from south east Northumberland and was well worth hiring a minibus for and continuing on the bypass past what Newcastle had to offer, which was a lot around the turn of the millenium.
But they knocked it down the other year. So if afternoon tea is the only reason to go there now let's face it, you can get a decent afternoon tea within 15 miles of anywhere.
And Geordies get a bit tetchy when you prounounce Newcastle to rhyme with arsehole, John Cheshire. (Relatives there too.)
ReplyDeleteNot so mild mannered and easy going as they like to make out, these Northerners.
(Since when did Londoners ever demand that Northerners pronounce 'London' Laarnden ?)
This has become so widespread that Southern newsreaders with home counties accents say 'Newcastle' to rhyme with tassel.
ReplyDeleteReally gets my goat.
Don Cox: Indeed, I lived for some years in Stockton-on-Tees while working in Middlesbrough and though a Geordie mesell I have a soft spot for the place.
ReplyDeleteEK: But, but, Newacastle DOES rhyme with tassel.
That shouldn't have published as anonymous...
ReplyDeleteSurely it's New 'Assel.
ReplyDeleteJoking aside this is very worrying because there are plenty of places in the country which are not enjoying the prosperity which we Down South are. These problems need addressing otherwise we risk a kind of Northern Nationalism blame culture with its political trappings. As an English person who thinks his island and his island's neighbours work very well together I do not want this kind of fracturing to occur.
Yarm's pretty with a neat railway viaduct - Rod Liddle hails from there. Used to be the place where Middlesbrough footballers would live.
ReplyDeleteIf you like appreciate a decent butchers get a bit further North to Hockings in Spennymoor - on a Saturday morn by far the busiest shop in the depressed centre.
https://www.facebook.com/Hockingsbutchers/