Channel 4 wed nite 9pm.
Programme following the residents of Hpool on universal credit.

I saw the photo shot promo for it and thought.....Nah. I suspect it’ll be a soap opera format about a serious subject.

I hope this isn't more poverty porn.

Channel 4 did a proper documentary called Skint I think in about 1995, which featured a young lass in the town. That was done quite sympathetically, but it was in the days when Channel 4 could be taken seriously.

I always think when they interview people from Hartlepool they scour the town for the type of people who are not typical of the general population.

Of course they do, it wouldn't make good TV if someone said "I have a reasonable job and get by quite well, I make modest savings and can go on holiday every year".

It's always been the same, going back to the infamous BBC programme featuring Fyfe Robertson and his "British West Hartlepool" comment.

This. ^^^
They’ll interview a few ‘local characters’ and the outside world will think we’re all like this. Cue shots of boarded up houses, Doberweilerpitbullmadbastard/Shetland Pony cross pissing up lamp post, and every crap aspect of their lives splashed over the telly. You’ll end up feeling itchy if you watch it all the through.

no it bugs me when they always seem to pain the north east and hartlepool in this fashion. if something is shit do a documentary in the north east regarding chavs, unemployment and poverty. guess what you could do one anywhere north of birmingham for that matter.

Pretty much what

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bjj734

was, although they did find some people who stuck up for the place and said it was fighting back.

Bang out of order. Hartlepool is booming, very few are skint, certainly not those on Universal Credit.

Or those that will get their backlog, when the 124m quid computer system is made to work.

Which it won't, because like the pensions age rise, they want you dead so you cant claim. Age or starvation, either will do as long as you snuff it.

Lovely lad that Ian Duncan Smith.

Why this constant negative representation of the town as though everyone in the town is living in some Dickensian rickets ridden poverty stricken shit hole. It has it’s bad points but more good points, as everywhere does.

The best skinning of a rabbit on a front room glass topped coffee table I've ever seen on tv.

This....exactly what the vile, odious Tory government stands for!

https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/new ... 4KvwV768SE

I think it was Morecambe the other week were I read about kids at school eating out of bins. Mental and ridiculous in 2019.

It just shows how far adrift from the realities of life of the working class this government really is - austerity measures that absolutely are crippling the desperately needy & vulnerable. They deserve jail time, the lot of 'em !!

Exactly ! So why do some, bury their head in the sand and pretend its Valhalla? Only stating the facts, telling it as it is , instead of bullshitting.

I was in Hartlepool over Christmas, first time for a few years. The deterioration was striking.

The town is a fucking shithole aside from a few bits on the outskirts. The main jobs were call centres which disappeared up Chey Garland's fat arse, there's nothing there unless you want to travel out of town or work in customer service/for the council.

The fact these people exist is a failure of the council who are self serving scumbags, look just up the coast to Seaham and you see a similar town with industry ripped out but because the council care they attract new business to the area and put the people first.

The government as a whole have to shoulder some of the blame, but when you look at council tax rates and the money spent on pipe dreams you have to realise it's closer to home where the problems lie.

agree with that. ameteurs trying to run the place. no someone who was on the council years ago who said he could not seek re election due to what he saw and heard in his time. not in hartlepool but in halifax a guy who was in passenger transport all his life was elected to the council. he thought with his experiance in the field they would put him on the transport commitee. no guess what he went on patks and gardens and admitted he,d no interest whatsoever and could not tell a rose from a snowdrop. what a way to run something. you would not believe it.

Unfortunately, as you no doubt suspected, it was.

That's Durham County Council at work in Seaham. Got to say as a DCC resident the council is doing its best in the face of massive cuts and endless austerity. NETPark here in Sedga is another success story.

Still now that Hartlepool Council has signed up to Middlesbrough being the capital of the Tees Valley again, things can - err- only get better?

Why should councils have to maintain services with less money it's been proven austerity is a political choice not a need. Yet people would rather bash the council for spending money on the likes of the Church Street regeneration which was a grant anyway.

If you're paying the highest rate of council tax would you expect your council to be trying to attract business to the town and providing basic public services or would you expect them to be buying land to build offices for themselves on or cafes in cemeteries?

I know which one has happened and I can't see the benefit.

The demand on services in the town must be really high, which is probably why council tax is so high.

I've got no doubt there will be a lot of waste though.

Like most towns we have pockets of social deprivation, our problem is a council given millions and they spend it re-inventing Church St, then Church Square and now they’re spending millions tarting up Stockton St which if they’d maintained it wouldn’t need doing. They call it a destination so you know you’ve arrived in Hartlepool, ffs you couldn’t make it up.
Why not spend that money on a business park instead of strutting around like the lord of the fecking manor inspecting and titvating whatever takes their fancy.

You have been told the Church Street money was a grant relating the the redevelopment of the art college do you not think this benefits the economy? why do you continue to peddle this lie?

The council has many failings as it did under Drummond and even before that but it blaming the council for the lack of jobs in the north east is completely missing the problem. How come the town was bouncing under Tony Blair but now its on the bones of its arse?

The local labour party are doing their best to oust the council leader anyway the main problem is there isn't an opposition you could vote for unless you have taken leave of your senses and like a repackaged UKIP party.

I think the last couple of posts have raised some good points that are specific to Hartlepool but the show in question isn’t new this is the fourth series of it. The issues in the other towns featured like Grimsby and Scunthorpe are no different as they aren’t in countless other places in the UK right now. Everywhere has good and bad. These people are making a TV show at the end of day, it’s clickbait TV that stumbles on one or two genuine issues. If Hartlepools a shithole then lots of the UK is right now as well.

Forget Hartlepool, has our country ever looked worse or more ‘skint’ on every level than it does right now? I reckon the rest of the World are judging it as a proper shithole.

[quote="unruly poolie"]
You have been told the Church Street money was a grant relating the the redevelopment of the art college do you not think this benefits the economy? why do you continue to peddle this lie?
what ‘lie’ is that? The Art college was coming regardless of the redevelopment. I reckon you should read up on this one. Church Square as well? They ripped up both areas which didn’t need ripping up and the money was from the Tees Valley Authority. So while the other authorities are investing in business parks, we’re spending our share on a bit of landscaping. If you want to attract new jobs I’d recommend a business park over a bit of bonny paving every time.

The council has many failings as it did under Drummond and even before that but it blaming the council for the lack of jobs in the north east is completely missing the problem. A council is supposed to be creating an environment for employment, neighbouring authorities don’t seem to be having a problem.How come the town was bouncing under Tony Blair but now its on the bones of its arse?

The local labour party are doing their best to oust the council leader anyway the main problem is there isn't an opposition you could vote forIf that’s the case, they must think the Labour Council Leader is useless. You’ve just answered my question for me and proved me right [quote]

They’ve been banging these documentaries out since the 60’s including Hartlepool and they all looked depressing every time and people were saying the same thing then.

I felt quite sad when the partially sighted guy was on, situations like that when he was ringing up, you need somebody with a bit of empathy rather than a jobsworth reading from a script and i hate that fucking ringtone also!

i never understand the need for fags over food and I smoked for 40 years, when I was made redundant and couldn`t get a job I made 10 fags last me a week, priorities first.

I wish they would level that shithole Odeon cinema, bastard eyesore.

That 'shithole' Odeon cinema is an art deco masterpiece that should be restored to its former glory rather than be levelled. But I'd sooner have it as a rotting echo of what it once was, rather than it be replaced by a corrugated iron and breeze block 'retail or leisure' opportunity. Most of the buildings of any interest in Hartlepool were either torn down years ago or sit derelict waiting for the wreckers ball. Apart from Church Street of course, which has had more comebacks than Gary Glitter, and still refuses to be the haven of the beautiful people that the the artists impressions promise.

Couldn’t agree more. If anyone driving past the Odeon looks up above the entrance there’s two magnificent friezes which should be preserved for posterity. I was looking recently of some photo’s of the area around Whitby Street In the 1950’s and some of the architecture was astonishing. I never realised there was a very ornate synagogue roughly where the telephone exchange is. This town has been done no favours down the years by councils when it comes to town planning, if we had the leaning tower of Pisa they’d straighten it and artex the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
It’s all about legacy’s combined with ego’s, it’s what they do.

Take Marks and Spencer for example. As I recall the Lynn Street M&S had an elegant frontage with some deco touches. The Middleton Grange M&S was bland like everything in the shopping centre, but at least was built to last. I was in the cafe of the current excuse for M&S on the Marina recently, wondering why it was so cold I looked up at ceiling to greeted by the sight of exposed ducting and the corrugated iron roof about thirty feet above. Now Kevin MacLeod or Kristy Alsop might gibber on about 'edgy', 'funky' or 'industrial chic', but in reality it's just cheap and nasty. Good buildings cost more but what is a town without them?

Good idea in theory, but the place has been sat empty for so long how much would it cost to restore it to its “former glory”

Also what could it be used for? It’s slap bang in a neighbouring area, which has grew around it, no car parking facilities,

If it wasn’t in such a shit run down area I’d suggest flattening it and turning it into a 5 a side court or something. As for my whole life time it’s basically been a run down shit hole.


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I reckon the only realistic option would be to preserve the friezes and build a small park on the site, shame, but the owners have left it to fall into it’s present state.

I always thought that the Odeon building would make a good indoor car park for match days when we got into the Championship, just hollow it out and make a two storey building for about 40 cars. Probably would'nt be cost effective of course.....one can dream.

Been working in Stockton the last 3 weeks . Now that IS a shithole .

Shame about Stockton High Street, always busy then the council stepped in to ‘improve’ it by relocating the market. Result, disaster. What was bouncing on a Wednesday and Saturday is now a big bare windswept paved performabpnce area’.
Been up South Shields recently to a few locations and it’s done a decent job at the sea front area but there’s a few grit spots off the main routes.

Couldn’t agree more. If anyone driving past the Odeon looks up above the entrance there’s two magnificent friezes which should be preserved for posterity. I was looking recently of some photo’s of the area around Whitby Street In the 1950’s and some of the architecture was astonishing. I never realised there was a very ornate synagogue roughly where the telephone exchange is. This town has been done no favours down the years by councils when it comes to town planning, if we had the leaning tower of Pisa they’d straighten it and artex the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
It’s all about legacy’s combined with ego’s, it’s what they do.[/quote]
some of my earliest memories were with my man walking around lynn st. and whitby st. and catching the proper coloured bus home. it seemed great and then the bloody 1960,s had to happen where anything that was not new or concrete had to go. in the north of england the only thing that was swinging in that decade was the wrecking ball. middleton grange the planners brave new world, i give up.

And yet the Aker-Felchers still get voted in. I'm sorry but the electorate of Hartlepool deserve everything they get.

I remember going down as a kid, a very busy place, the market building, pubs on every corner, in fact it would have been in ideal site to develop around it, but oh no, the Councillors have to leave a legacy and they built the shopping centre. Me dad called it a cross between a wind tunnel and a U boat pen.
Even Church Street made sense then and it really was an area full of character, the same can’t be said for the shopping centre.

No they don't

Did you see the program?, Does that blind fella deserve what's happening to him

Take your Tory drive austerity plan, which is wicked and there to punish the people who have the least to do with the financial crash and stick it right up your fucking arse

Thank you both for proving my point.

Incidentally, it's not my austerity plan and nor have I ever supported it. Even if I did it wipe away the neglect of labour in the town over many decades.

It's odd then, innit that over my adult life, the only relative property in the town has occurred while there was a labour government in charge, but I'm sure I've just imagined it, me being a cuck snowflake and all that

At least you can afford a house at home try saving for a mortgage deposit down here where prices are sky high. You need at least £25k deposit just to even walk in the door. BTW I know it’s all relative and I chose to live down here but I thinking offirst time buyers where I live and not everyone here is on £50k a year

Just to add what I was getting on to a house in my village which basically is like a terrace house two bed on oxford road went for £195k it’s madness

When was that then, the first and biggest change was the Marina, Church Street and Church Square under the TDC which was actually under the Tories surprisingly.

Who actually owns the Odeon?