My lovely mate John Holmes, chief executive of Hull Forward, writes to tell me of his gig on the panel at the Northern Regeneration and Renewal SummitConference talking about the HCA Single Conversation. What a toadie! Honestly, the things he'll do to curry favour!
He reports that Hull is on track to have the first HCA Local Investment Plan in place in the HCA Yorks and Humber region. He stops short of adding "so ya sucks Leeds City Region", but I know well that the competition up there is pretty fierce, and I bet his staff are thinking it at least.
Well good on him. John sends me regular snippets about Hull on the basis that he knows I was at university there and I have a Soft Spot. Ever since the promotion of Hull City Football club to the FA Premier League, he always insists on referring to it as "Yorkshire's Premiership City" and you do have to smile.
It is a genuine and perpetual sadness to me that I don't really "get" football. Football is currency and there are few opportunities that I would normally pass up to make a connection with folk. But I just can't do it.
I can get it on the basis of the redevelopment of football pitches into mixed-use developments predicated on leisure (such as the Arsenal triumph, or the proposed developments at Tottenham or Brentford) and I can certainly get it on the basis of the potential to take youngsters off the streets and motivate them to participate in something other than knives and drugs.
But I just can't personally get excited about the prospect of lads running around a field after a bit of leather for 90 minutes. It's too full of dirty rough boys, and worse than that is the interminable analysis!
I am however, utterly enchanted, with the news that Everton FC has opened their new store in the Grosvenor scheme, Liverpool One, calling it "Everton Two" (their first store is obviously at their ground). This means the address is "Everton Two, Liverpool One". What a classic and gorgeous bit of Scouse humour. Wonderful.
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