Ten Years Ago Today

I still remember it well. People turning up with flowers from all-night garages. Then when they sold out, visitors uprooted plants from their homes and brought them instead.

I'd heard there'd been a car accident on Saturday night. As a producer at GMTV, I offered to come in to help out on the story. We all thought she'd survived, a bit shaken up but nothing more than that.

I was sitting at my computer when I saw the short item drop on the Press Association wires. Diana had died. Two things hit me, the utter sadness of her death and then, the fact that this was the biggest story I would ever work on in my life. Period.

The usual short Sunday Programme was scrapped for a full show fronted by Fiona Phillips. Her husband Martin Frizzel and I were dispatched to Kensington Palace - the first reporters there when the flowers started to arrive.

A week later, I returned to Kensington Palace. The gardens had become a sea of flowers and candles. As I walked amongst the hundreds keeping vigil that night before the funeral, the smell stood out - petals diffused with candle wax. It was quite overpowering, almost overwhelming. Like her death.

Some people say the public's grief was misplaced, that we were caught up in a national hysteria but I don't agree.

We've all lost friends or families way before their time so we could all empathise with William and Harry. For that week, we were all one family.

I just wish sometimes that that common sense of belonging, solidarity and empathy could be replicated more often and in less tragic circumstances.

A for effort

Great news for Hull with the GCSEs. OK, there's a lot of work to do, but I think the way teachers, parents and pupils have risen to the challenge has been fantastic.

My mate Chris is an assistant head at Kingswood. When it was closed down as Perronet Thompson, the percentage of kids getting five good GCSEs was just 6%

Last year, Kingswood got 62%. But under the gold standard of calculating GCSEs (ensure English and Maths are two of those five A-C passes)it plumetted back down to 7% But the teachers have made a real effort to weave the importance of literacy into every single lesson.

For example, in PE, a one word reply from a student is not acceptable. They have to deliver a full sentence. You might not think that would achieve much, but it makes them work and think harder.

It's having an effect too - this year they've gone from 7% to almost 17.5% That's a big jump in a year, especially when almost half the kids are entitled to free school meals. In fact, when these factors are taken into account with the contextual value added measure, it's actually in the top 10% of the best schools in the country.

So let's not run our kids down saying the exams are easier and they're taking less challenging subjects.

Hull fights with one hand behind its back - unlike other similar cities we don't have the suburbs to raise our average. Which makes the success of Kingswood all the more remarkable and the achievement of its pupils something we should be very proud of.

Dear Carl...you owe me £290!

Just as we thought, Minns strategy to vastly inflate the amount of flood damaged home (remember when it reached 17,000 homes? It actually settled around under 7,000) is finally blowing up in his face and hammering hard-working Hull families.

Sharon Holland's home in West Hull wasn't even flooded but now she's received a letter from her insurers to say her monthly permium is going to be doubled from
from £26.53 to £50.76. That's an extra £290 a year.

All this in spite of the assurance from the Association of British Insurers
that unaffected households that did not make a claim wouldn't see any change in the cost of their annual premium.

Minns announced that council tax-paying residents whose homes were flooded in June would receive a cheque to the value of 25 per cent of their annual council tax bill.

It's tempting to say this rebate should also be extended to those like Sharon whose homes weren't flooded but are paying the price thanks to the Fib Dems incompetence. But I have a better idea.

Sharon - keep paying your £26.53 and tell your insurers to invoice Minns for the rest. I'll make it easy - Flat 2, 66 Spring Bank, Kingston upon Hull, HU3 1AB.

And make the him pay the post!

Here is the news..

You'll have spotted through a gap in posts that I’ve been really busy this month.

In media and public relations, August is widely known as ‘silly season’. I mustn’t have got the memo!

What basically happens is newspaper readership figures drop off in August as people are on holiday, this leads to less advertising revenue for newspapers as advertisers typically see less value in booking space during this time because fewer people see their ads.

When you combine this with the fact Parliament takes its summer recess, that there are fewer business deals and announcements from the City and the most popular sports are in the off season – it means there’s much less news about and fewer people to read it.

Newspapers are therefore more inclined to print attention-grabbing headlines or completely frivolous articles to boost sales. Sometimes it’s pretty funny like “Victor Meldrew found in Space” from a couple of years ago or this year’s “Shark off Cornwall Coast.”

But some stories matter and thankfully get the coverage they deserve. Look North highlighted the plight of the residents of Yorkshire Close this week who had been waiting a scandalous two months for their flood damaged goods to be removed from the front of their homes.

They were told by the council it would take at least another ten days before they could collect it. It's funny how making the lead on Look North focuses the minds of this incompetent Lib Dem council. The next day, the street was completely cleaned!

If Carl Minns had spent less time quoting vastly-inflated figures of flood damage (£380m, err....£200m.....ok £40m) and more time doing the basics like clearing rubbish from people's streets, we might be getting somewhere.

But it's all spin with Minns and the Fib Dems. Did you know the PR agency who spinned for the council during the floods has another big client? Walt Disney! The perfect match - we've got a Mickey Mouse council leader and a Goofy adminstration.

Roll on May!

It ain't Rover til it's Rover

Kicking myself this morning. I had the chance to get the coach from Crown to Salford last night. Sadly, I had a lot of work on and couldn't make it.
What a game - the old Cookie is back and worked brilliantly with Webster to deliver a win that could help guarantee Super League for another season. (Beating the Bulls at home next Sunday could seal it.)
Ok, there were a few defensive errors and some of the tackling was a bit off, but Rovers were back playing with a real passion, especially in the second half. Hodgson must have been pig sick being bundled over the line twice by Lovegrove and Goddard. Great to see 3,000 people making the effort to cross the Pennines on a Friday night.
Tried to call Sumpo who'd gone on the Crown coach but there was no answer! Bet there's a few sore heads and angry wives this morning!

Chip Spice. Hull's Marmite. Discuss

I remember it well. Before Ronald McDonald came to Hull, Yankee Burger was the only proper burger bar in the city.( I don't count the Bun in the Oven - though it had by far the better name.)

I never cared about the burgers, but my god the chips! The seasoning was like nothing I'd tasted before. Who'd have thought the subtle blend of paprika, tomato, garlic and salt would be so popular.

I personally think there's a direct correlation to the increase in childhood obestity in Hull and Yankee Burger's introduction of chip spice in the early 80s.
You can't buy it down in London - requests are met with quizzical and somewhat pitying looks.

The reason I mention chip spice is that it's the subject of a very amusing thread on Facebook in the group "It's Never Dull in Hull" which now has 1,840 members.

It's amazing how the little things provoke the biggest response - a thread on axing the Humber Bridge debt has only had one posting whilst "Chip spice - the Hull equivelent of Marmite: Love it, or hate it?" has had 77!

Back to schools of the future

I defy anyone not to want to give up the day job and become a teacher after meeting Anna Hassan.

Anna's been the head teacher of Millfields Community School in Hackney, East London for more than ten years.

It's a challenged area - more than 40 languages are spoken by the pupils and almost three quarters speak English as their second language.

The school was run down and dirty, staff morale was low and kids badly behaved. So she started doing small things that eventually made a bigger impact - cleaning up the staff room started to raise morale amongst teachers.

Then she tackled pupil behaviour by suggesting that teachers own negative attitude was a contributory factor. It caused a lot of arguements, but slowly the mood changed at the school with teachers and pupil behaviour improving. This then raised standards and pupil achievement. From being a school that some parents wouldn't touch with a barge pole, Millfields now has a 100 strong waiting list.

Millfields has pioneered the principle of the extended school - putting the school at the heart of the community.

Instead of just using the school for pupils between 8.30 and 3.30pm, everyone can use it. Mums can attend post natal classes, the toddlers go to the on-site children's centre and when they reach four, move to the nursery in the next room. Then at five, it's through anotehr door into the primary. This makes the transition between each absolutely seemless and a lot less stressful.

But it doesn't stop there - children can go to breakfast clubs and attend cheap after-school clubs where the can get a meal, have fun with art and more importantly, get looked after while their parents are away at work. Even the adults get a look in, using the schools rooms for everything from computer skills to help with numeracy and literacy. It's really a school for the community.

As you walk through Millfields, you see the difference that Anna's ethos of putting kids and learning at the heart of all decisions makes. The pupils are full of life but respectful, crying out "Hiya Anna" whenever she enters the room. One pupil loved Anna so much, she brought in a present - a lump of cannabis.

All schools will eventually be extended schools. But to make them work will mean dealing with three key challenges: assessing the really needs in the community, finding the inspriational heads and teachers to run them and giving them the freedom to run the schools the best way they can, allowing them to do what they do best - teach.

If we really want social mobility, raise the aspirations of our kids and provide REAL ladders of opportunity, we need more heads like Anna.