To be embarrassed to be from Hull right now?

[Chester23]

These "protests" just look like a load of people out for a fight. People on live steams talking about going to get beer and seem to be having a great time.
Causes are lost because of reasons like this? Why would I support you when you are destroying my city? Setting fire to bins? Throwing all sorts at the police. I can't support this.

Well.....it's slightly subjective. It's beautiful to me because that's where I'm from!!😉
However, if you were to visit, the old town and marina are lovely with some decent bars and places to eat. The city has some decent galleries and interesting museums. The shopping's not the best but there are some nice independent shops around the marina and in some of the arcades.

Not read the full thread so apologies, but I have lived within 20 miles of Hull for pretty much all of my life.

I became ashamed to be from Hull when Libby Squires was dragged off the street by a convicted sex offender from Poland pretending to be a taxi driver, and raped and murdered. When you can't walk down Beverley Rd without feeling you're in a different country, when I used to be scared for my ex husband working on Spring Bank because the kurdish communities would end up fighting between themselves and quite often used knives and he saw this with his own eyes regularly. When my 15 year old son marched in the first parade to mark the freedom of the city this year, was wearing Army cadet uniform and was followed round town by an Asian man shouting 'uniform, uniform' at him and gesturing angrily, and had to hide in Primark and ring his dad to collect him because he was too scared to get the bus home. When the same boy and his friend were physically assaulted (punched in the stomach) near The Deep at the age of 14 by a grown man screaming at them in an Eastern European language. When I took him to see a performance before Christmas at the City Hall and we walked through the city centre at about 10pm and the same boy and his younger brother, then 13 and 15, had a man screaming at them and he leant across the younger one to scream in the older one's face. My sons just kept walking as did I (who was about 10m behind them) because we were terrified, and the older one later said the random man had screamed the same word as the other man that had hit him. We ran it through Google translate and it's the Polish for bastard.

That's when I became ashamed of Hull and my granny who used to speak about how beautiful the place was before the war will be spinning in her grave in the cemetery on Chants Ave to see what's going on today. Now, while smashing up the city and assaulting police officers is indefensible, I am am well educated and articulate enough to be able to express my views in others ways. I know how to write to my MP, to hold a conversation and express a view properly and most importantly I am in a position where I can buy my boys out of needing to go to the city because I can (just) afford to live in the next door market town, send them to the outstanding state grammar school there and pay for them to do activities rather than hang around town. My partner is in a different league financially and lives in a beautiful village in North Yorkshire in a house worth nearly £700k and I ship out there when I've not got the kids and I've just inherited my mums detached cottage on the coast and will be moving there as soon as I've renovated it so I'm even further away from Hull but still within 20 miles.

But imagine you can't. Imagine you're stuck there and the city is full of aggressive foreign people, you're on the waiting list for a house for what seems like forever and your kids are going to a school like Stepney. I volunteered there earlier this year and they wax lyrical about the 39 languages that are spoken there. All I could see is British kids struggling to make progress because of the high amount of kids who can barely speak English and despaired.

You're limited by the education you had (or didn't have) because the schools in Hull have never been great and the jobs you have access to are all low skill, low pay and have 300 people applying for each. The cost of living is biting and you're tired, pissed off and scared for the future in a city you don't recognise any more and then you see a protest organised on Facebook. Because you can't see the far right influence, you come from a culture of drinking in town every weekend becaue there's been nothing else to do since you were a kid, you would have no clue how to write a formal letter to your MP or the police and crime commissioner or maybe even don't know who those people are, you're tired of living in a city you don't recognise and want better for your kids you go, you have a few beers and you listen to the speakers whipping up a frenzy and the next thing you know you're lobbing bricks and the Royal Hotel and being arrested.

I am in no way condoning what went on this week end but I certainly understand it, and for the prime minister to start spouting about how those involved will live to regret it is a national disgrace. He should be asking what the problems are in places like Hull and promising to address them, not berating those who feel so strongly about the loss of a city's identity that they demonstrate and end up being used by organisations like the EDL.

Sorry that's long but I it's something I feel very strongly about and half the people going on about how appalling it is and how the people involved have got the iq of a steak bake would hate to live somewhere like Hull, or Hartlepool or Boro, ans couldn't possibly empathise with those that do.

You are condoning it though.

No, I'm just saying that I understand how it happened. At no point have I said that rioting is the way forward.

I am in no way condoning what went on this week end but I certainly understand it, and for the prime minister to start spouting about how those involved will live to regret it is a national disgrace. He should be asking what the problems are in places like Hull and promising to address them, not berating those who feel so strongly about the loss of a city's identity that they demonstrate and end up being used by organisations like the EDL.

This whole paragraph is condoning the rioting. If you can't see it, you aren't thinking. What those people did wasn't demonstrating - it was rioting and thuggery, and there are no excuses. As for 'feeling strongly about the loss of a city's identity' - that just translates as 'waaaaah it's not white enough for me'. God, MN is so full of apologists.

But that’s how she feels. Who are you to challenge that? It’s not about it not being ‘white enough’, it’s about not wanting the crime that a lot of cultures being to the country. If you don’t like people voicing that, then I’m afraid that comes under the heading of ‘tough’. You don’t have to agree with her sentiments, but you shouldn’t minimise her concerns, which btw are shared with many moderate people.

bring

Who am I? I am someone who has been unhappy with many of the things that have happened under the previous government, someone who voiced that unhappiness by using her words, someone who didn't go out and riot, didn't attack hotels where brown people were, didn't steal bricks from people's gardens, didn't set things on fire.

As for 'the crime that a lot of cultures bring' - let's talk about the crime that the culture of extreme nationalistm brings, shall we? No excuses. It's pathetic. ,

If you want change, vote, protest peacefully, write to those in power, use words and not violence. And don't make apologies for those who choose the path of violence.

Ah so let’s not upset somebody if they feel trying to burn down and attack buildings with terrified children and women inside is ok. Let’s validate their feelings. 🤔

Nobody condones the current riots. But it’s an extreme to what a lot of moderate people feel. Multiculturism, imo, just doesn’t work. Multiculturism should mean communities and different races living together, integrating and sharing the same values. But that’s not how it is in the UK. Just lots of division with people not wanting to live amongst us, but want to create their own communities to replicate the countries they’ve left behind. You clearly think differently, and that’s your prerogative. But other people can, and do, have a different opinion to you.

Well said.

@Livelovebehappy how you do define integration? Some people complain that 'they don't hear English spoken on the streets anymore'. So when my aunt, who is mid-70s, comes over and we go somewhere, are we not allowed to speak in Dutch to each other? Her English is good, but some things just need Dutch for her. Should I stop supporting the Netherlands in sports? Do I have to give up cooking Indonesian food for myself? Yes, those are extreme examples - but where do you draw the line?

I agree that if you come and live in a country, you should speak the language. Frankly, my English is a great deal better than that of many people who were born here. I also agree that you need to abide by the laws of the country you live in, and I am opposed to Islamic marriages, the Jewish divorce process and any form of genital mutilation including circumcision for boys for non-medical reasons (can you see why this is not a simple question?). Those are my opinions. Others will have different opinions on what integration is.

I am shocked to see children in the crowds. Their parents think it's all a jolly jape.

My parents were immigrants expats in Spain.

You sum up the British abroad, in their expat communities too! Speaking only English, British bars, food and shops. Using local services. Complaining that ‘a Spanish family has bought a house on ‘our’ urbanisation.

But that was exactly my point if you bothered to read what I wrote - people like you and I have the skills to be able to get our point across in other ways, a lot of the communities targeted to join the protests may not. And tbf @pointythings, who exactly are you to invalidate my opinion? Let's see how fluffy you are when it's your daughter that's been murdered while merely at university in the wrong city, or your child that's smacked by a foreign bloke in his home city.

I agree entirely!

What does the nationality of the criminal who offends against your child matter? It wouldn't matter to me. Not. At. All.

I'm happy to challenge that, and even happier to 'minimise' what I see as a thoroughly misplaced set of concerns. I am originally Hullensian. If you think that Hull doesn't have plenty of its own home-grown criminals; that it doesn't have issues with drugs and prostitution owing in part to being a port city; if you didn't see high criminality levels caused by addiction and only a tiny number of drug and alcohol counsellors covering a vast area; if you think there haven't been 'no-go' areas even since the days when a brown face was a very unusual, minority sight in a fairly sequestered geographical area; if you don't think the city has always had a sizeable Jewish populace that kept itself to itself and in no way 'imposed' its rules and laws on others; if you didn't see gangs of blokes brawling outside the bus station when the pubs kicked out every Friday night; if your mother's hair didn't stand on end if you even thought about going to Henry's or the Vicky Coffee Club in case you never came back; if having your drink spiked in the Polar Bear didn't terrify you; if you didn't take your life into your hands just by walking into the sink comprehensive where bullying was rife and condoned even by teachers; if you don't think that women could be gang-raped by a pack of white monsters (ask me how I know), then you are viewing 'Hull, the Good Old Days' through the rosy spectacles of nostalgia and with respect were not seeing the issues unfolding right under your nose.

Before the war was a long time ago, and until around 20-30 years ago the city was still overwhelmingly white. What my elder relatives remembered was a city flattened by the Luftwaffe in WW2, because it was easily visible to the eastbound planes owing to the large river with distinctive bends, and which has never, to this day, been properly rebuilt. Ergo, the cause of these issues is far longer-standing than these recent issues and newer residents. There have been asylum seekers in hotels in the more affluent villages along the A63 corridor, and you would not have known they were there. They haven't caused one moment's trouble that I know of: and if they had this would quickly have been publicised because those areas (and their MP) fought their arrival tooth and nail at the time.

If the city of Hull has 'lost its identity', it's because its core industry of fishing has disappeared and the 30 or so ships coming into the docks daily have dwindled down to 3-4; it's because gradually the fish processing factories and smoke houses in the Hessle Road area have closed and the housing population there were despatched to one of the biggest council housing estates in Europe; it's because these estates are on the fringes of the city and with nothing for younger residents to do, and of the older population, some have understandably given up. Hull's problems are caused by poverty, social deprivation, and poor education. They have historically happened - are still happening - because successive governments and councils haven't invested in an area which has still yet to recover - if it ever does - from the policies of neoliberalism and Thatcherism. Poverty and addiction issues bring criminality, and these have been a long-standing problem in Hull. No one can claim that these issues are imported. They were already there.

@SerafinasGoose thank you for that excellent demolition of every single one of the apologists' arguments.

Adding to my thanks. Sunderland, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough (family from Hull and I spent some of my childhood there, now live in the Northeast) all have similar histories based around their own traditional industries. None were ever a utopia. All have been neglected by governments through the decades.

Noone, least of all me, is saying that Hull doesn't have home grown issues and has as long as I can remember. Which makes it more nonsensical to have huge populations from completely different cultures with their own particular needs moving in and diluting the already scant resources. Honestly if you can't see why people are reacting the way they are then it's you with the problem. I repeat, I don't condone the behaviour but I most certainly understand it. And there was no chance of me having my drink spiked in the Polar Bear I can assure you. That most certainly would not have been my idea of a good night, I was down at Pepis and the pubs around the marina, or out of Hull in Kirk Ella or Swanland 😉

Same with every protest. Blm was rioting and looting, now these clowns.

As a fellow Hullensian, I applaud this post. Hull has had problems for the whole fifty years of my life, immigration or no immigration.

I was driven around Greatfield Estate as a Sociology A Level field trip - to observe the deprivation, believe it or not.

It’s been no bloody Shangri La at any point since World War 2.

Dear me. Are you trying to be insufferable?

I had the misfortune to live there (DF's work accommodation) in the 70s. Thankfully he secured a house in a nicer estate after a few years. Looking back, I hadn't realised how dirt poor a lot of people obviously were, there because it was so normal. As a fairly free range 9 year old, my more immediate concerns were avoiding the rough and scary kids.