Come On You Hull! By Laura Baldwin

So our latest award to sit alongside our much treasured worst city to live in the UK award' is that of the fattest city in the UK. Yep, not content with telling us that we live in the most crap city in the UK but apparently we're also a bunch of big lard arses as well. Charming. It seems that no-one has anything good to say these days about the historic city of Hull. A once thriving fishing port, Hull appears to have gradually degenerated into a city of despair and hopelessness if all reports are to be believed.

We constantly feature in the press, for our high crime rate, poor GCSE results and high number of teenage pregnancies, but calling us fat, well that's just kicking us while we're down!

So are we really that bad a city? Is Hull really the cess pit of Great Britain that everyone seems to think it is? Should we all just pack up our belongings and move our fat selves somewhere else? Personally I don't think so. The city of Kingston Upon Hull (to use the posh name) has the potential to be a great place to live.

We have an exciting cultural history stretching back over 700 years, from the granting of the charter in 1299, to the development and demise of the cities docks, through the bombing of the blitz, to the current regeneration of the town centre.

It appears that all this history is being ignored. Instead we chose to listen to the mindless criticism of a few bitter individuals who feel it necessary to label Hull with every negative association they can think of. (What will it be next, Hull has the worst sandwiches in Britain?) These attacks on our city are largely unjustified and are based purely on personal opinion rather than fact.

Yes I realise that Hull has a lot of problems, there is no denying the GCSE league tables and the crime statistics but the claims made by people like Finlay Coutts - Britton (the man who voted Hull the worst town in Britain) are unfounded and to be honest, rather stupid. He's obviously not intelligent enough to distinguish the difference between a city and a town for starters but that's not the point. I digress.

Hull stands as one of the best cities for potential investors. With companies like BP, Kingston Communications and Reckitt Benckiser all thriving with business, it is poised for future success both locally and internationally. The current regeneration of the town centre is set to create 2500 jobs and will finally bring Hull into the 21st century in terms of modern shopping and transport facilities. The plans also include contemporary accommodation to rival that of cities such as Leeds and Manchester.

However, it doesn't matter how much money we pour into the regeneration of Hull or how many state of the art shopping complex's we have. As long as people continue to listen to all these ridiculous negative comments, Hull will always be stuck in the slums. Because of the state the city has been allowed to fall into, morale is low and the people living in Hull seem to have no hope of it ever dragging itself out of this depression. You only have to listen to people refer to their home town as dull ull to see this.

I think it's about time that the people of Hull (me included) stopped whinging about the state of the city and moaning that it will never get any better, and instead get behind some of the insightful projects that are going on and show their support for the improvements. You only have to look at other cities who have dragged themselves out of the doldrums to know that it can happen. Liverpool is a perfect example of a city that was once run down and riddled with crime and poverty. It too, had negative associations. Most of them were caused by Brookside and were related to people with dodgy perms wearing shell suits shouting carm down, carm down in case you're not familiar.

Despite this it dragged itself out and Liverpool today is one of the most thriving cities in Britain. (If you're sniggering now you obviously haven't been recently) and has been made the European Capital of Culture 2008.

So, I have faith. I have faith that Hull will manage to come out of this depression and prove to Mr Coutts-Britton and the rest of the sneering critics that we can make it as a top ten city. The people of Hull need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and listening to all this criticism and instead look to the future of what has the potential to be a diverse and prosperous city. People of Hull stand up! (If you're not too fat to do so, that is.)

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