Official – it’s rarely grim Up North these days

May 28 2008 by Iain Laing, The Journal

THIS region doesn’t seem to have been out of the national headlines for the past 12 months, and usually for all the wrong reasons.

From the challenges that have faced Northern Rock or serious data security breaches at HM Revenue and Customs, to political funding crises and the more frivolous tales of Seaton Canoe, there has been a strong North East England flavour to the news agenda.

My suspicion is that for our national media, both print and broadcast, these stories fit the mould of a slightly backward region still defined by the industrial and social decline that provided the extra cast members for Get Carter, the Likely Lads, Auf Weidersehen, Pet and Billy Elliot.

Like most people, I’ve always known this terribly prejudiced perspective was wrong and now we have the evidence to prove it. NERIP – the ghastly-titled team of statisticians and researchers responsible for measuring how the North East has performed economically and in ‘quality of life’ terms – has published its annual State of the Region report.

At the front of the 174-page tome is a summary of the North East that should be pinned above every news editor’s desk. It’s there in black and white: quality of life in the North East is good in a region that has outperformed national economic growth for the past four years and in 2006 was the fastest growing part of the UK. Tourists are visiting our region in record numbers, and we are – statistically speaking – getting healthier. Oh, and crime is low.

I’m not naïve enough to suggest that this recent upturn in our fortunes will be enough to insulate us totally from a bumpy economic ride that now seems inevitable. We are already seeing the early impact of fuel cost rising, public sector spending squeezed and the housing market beginning to wobble.

But we are in a unique position – one that sees the North East facing these global challenges from a position of relative strength. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that the national media understand that it’s rarely grim up North.

Andrew Sugden, NECC director of membership and policy