All right, so Geordie Shore and Geordie Finishing School are not exactly aimed at me. In any case, people from County Durham are not Geordies, as Geordies would be the first to tell you.
But the latter, since it was made at public expense, is still the most pig ignorant BBC depiction of the North East since it sent some Jolly Hockey Sticks reporter to walk around upmarket Tynemouth, which always had a Tory MP until 1997, and marvel that the Conservative Party had managed to win a few council seats anywhere so improbable.
The question should have been how it ever managed to lose them. Even last year, it still did not managed to win back the seat in Parliament. Have you ever been to Tynemouth?
Until this year, Newcastle had had a Lib Dem council for some years. That authority was under Tory control for much of the post-War period, and the city regularly returned Tory MPs for certain seats.
There is still a strikingly high number of privately schooled children, a posh university with Princess Eugenie at it, a thriving arts scene that is certainly not reminiscent of the pitmen painters, several gentlemen’s clubs, a racecourse of some importance, and no shortage of the swankier sorts of shops, restaurants, bars, and the like.
There are poor places around it (as well as several very rich ones), but there are very few poor areas in it, although the ones that there are, are undeniably very poor indeed.
Any chance of a programme in which the products of somewhere like the Central High are sent to somewhere like the South Coast or numerous parts of London in order to learn how the other half live?
Always assumed you didn't watch them, as only that could account for the lack of a post like this. But you have seen them now.
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