Mark Pollard's Response to a Couple of Hull's Blinkered Critics By Mark Pollard

Well, Channel 4's rubbish programme the other week (I can't even be arsed to mention it's name any more) certainly resulted in the odd fucknut blowing the cobwebs from their PC keyboard and jumping onto that bitter little bandwagon, didn't it? You want to know what's the worst thing about Hull? It's that, like any other city, it has it's fair share of these types - the sort of people who are either unwilling or unable to see the world beyond the end of their noses.

To Ted Robinson - I'm sorry to hear that you've had your car broken into seven times, been violently robbed, that most of the people you know have been burgled and that an under-resourced, over-stretched police force proved to be useless. How tragic that you have to live in the only city where this sort of thing happens.

I don't know how old you are Ted, but if you've lived in Hull for almost ten years, I reckon there's a good chance that it hasn't left you a lot more time to live in the other 15-20 cities of similar size to ours. Which, let's face it, is the only way you could make a proper comparison. And to Marphy Jones; well, I'm almost at a loss as to how to respond to your raving nonsense.

I actually thought twice about whether or not to take you to task; what, with you being a self-confessed foreigner living in Hull. Bless him/her, I momentarily thought; he/she's only passing an opinion, trying to become part of the fabric of his/her adopted home. Then the nano-second passed and I came back to my senses. Foreigner or not, your opinion stinks. I'll open with your last line: Hull has it's conditions that other cities don't have. Really? What are they? Naughty kids? That's a global phenomenon stretching back centuries, I'm afraid. Anyway, have you met them all? I know loads of lovely, well-behaved kids. Impolite people? Ditto, you fool.

Environment is dirty, rubbish everywhere and Bus system is inconvenient - same as just about every other town or city I've ever been to in the UK. So many Chavs wandering on the street. Again, not really peculiar to Hull. I might add that I once read about the word Chav being an abbreviation of the term Cheltenham Average. Wow - I thought Cheltenham was supposed to be what Channel 4 might regard as a nice place. You ever been there, Marph'? Education levels and teenage pregnancy? Right - let me tell you all about Hull's political boundary, and the way it skews those sort of statistics......

On second thoughts, maybe not - it's been covered so many times, by so many people, that if you haven't heard it by now you're obviously not interested or not smart enough to understand the problem. It's pretty clear to me that you either haven't been to many other UK cities, or you walked round them with your eyes closed. So don't judge ours until you've rectified this, matey.

I'll finish with some comments that were ridiculous even by your laughable standards: Boring scenery... If you can manage to find a bus that will take you there, I suggest that you travel ten miles or so to the edge of the glorious Yorkshire Wolds, then start walking and let the land respond with a level of grace and beauty that my words could never emulate.

..River of chocolate... The mighty River Humber has its distinctive colour because of the nature of the sediment that it picks up along it's course, rather than something that the naughty, impolite, uneducated, Chavs and pregnant schoolgirls of Hull have done to it. I'd love to know what you think we should do to improve these images, Marphy. Commission a few snow-capped mountains for East Park, perhaps? Introduce hippos and flamingos to Hessle foreshore? I'd be interested to know what your PHD is in, too - I'm guessing that it's not Geography. I'd be even more interested to know what it is that you like... very much about Hull; perhaps that could form the basis of your next piece for thisisull.com.......

Opinions - MP Diana Johnson Uninspired by Hull By David Sloan

Hull MP Diana Johnson thinks prisoners should be allowed to vote. If she went on the streets of Hull and asked the people what they thought I'm sure she would get a very different answer. She was inspired, she says by a former inmate John Hirst, who served a life sentence for manslaughter. He mounted a legal challenge saying depriving him of his vote was against his human rights. He is now free, Read more...

Opinions - Christmas Shopping Opportunity By Mr. A.N. Gry
	Well Christmas will soon be upon us and everyone is busy getting their Christmas shopping lists ready of what to get their kids or even themselves, but unfortunately at some other poor bugger's expense! Yes, the Christmas bookings for stereos and PCs and play stations etc., etc, etc. are being taken and the opportunists are a knocking at our backdoors and windows (good job we have 3 monsters Read more...

Opinions - Amused or not, a muse on Yo-Yo By Michelle Dee
	Whilst all you scenesters were at Leeds watching the likes of The Killers, The Pixies and The Paddingtons... life continued back home. Welly on Saturday was a little emptier than previous weeks, but that just meant there was more room to move and it wasn't quite so hot. DJ Priya had a difficult job tonight due to the lack of so many regulars Read more...

Opinions - Did Hitler See the Good in Hull ? by David Sloan

	Hull has been voted Worst City in the UK to live, on a recent Channel 4 TV programme. This of course was not always the case. Before the war Hull was a prosperous important sea port. Unfortunately the last politician to recognise this was Adolf Hitler. The Germans saw Hull as a major port and manufacturing centre. That's why Hull was the second Read more...

Opinions - Bringing Me Down By Steve Stewart
	Why do others bring people down all the time? Can people not leave other people alone, or is it because some of us want to get on with our lives but others won't let us? I wrote this and would like to share it with you who read it. At the moment I am feeling that it's never going to end. Maybe, hopefully this may help some of Read more...

Opinions - Reply to Tom Hawcroft By Lee Cassanell

	Well, you rattle a cage and you get a response. Thank you from the bottom of my heart Mr Hawcroft for taking the time and effort to respond. War is indeed Hell (Yes I've seen Platoon) but when someone throws a grenade into your Garden Party I think it's only fair to throw it back so I will indeed respond to your response in the vain hope that you tear yourself away from your moral Read more...

Opinions - Letter to Tom Hawcroft From Maurice Fairfield

Dear Tom Hawcroft, I only know Lee Cassanell as an able though inferior versifier publishing in these pages (although he did call me a genius recently). Reading his vitriolic piece on the old place, I was a bit surprised by the entertaining venom until I got myself back in the Hull mindset which I remember well as generally being expressed in the form of open derision for most things and Read more...

Opinions - Regarding Tom Hawcroft's Retort to Lee Cassanell's Hull By Mark Pollard

	I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I think Tom might have been hoodwinked by a piece of ever-so-clever, post-industrial, post-modern, post-comedy, post-post-whatever, irony schmirony by Master Cassanell. Sorry - I'm being ironic myself now. Or am I? Lee - I think you need to come clean about your motivations here; something that may require a Read more...

Opinions - Retort to Lee Cassanell's Hull By Tom Hawcroft

	Lee Cassanell, when you were drafting out your masterpiece entitled simply; Hull (brilliant, just brilliant), what were you hoping to achieve? If it was to undermine and belittle the hardworking and conscientious people in this city (of which there are many), via the use of a series of independent non-factual rants then you may have succeeded. I understand this is the opinions Read more...

Opinions - Hull By Susan North

	Guess these guys never lived here in Hull and are talking through their arses. Hull is a city full of history and warm hearted people who will open their doors to anyone genuinely needing help. Always has been for centuries. OK, most cities have some bad points but that goes with the generations of the day as they Read more...

Opinions - Hull - A Letter to Jon Snow Channel 4 By Maurice Fairfield - Another program knocking Hull?

	I have lived in Australia for twenty years but I was born in Hull in 1928 and have lived with patronising contempt for the place ringing in my ears all my life. Perhaps less the town and its people in general but the working-class people who have lived with the contempt of the middle-class who lived off them and who I remember as themselves contemptible. Read more...

Opinions - Hull By By Ted Oliver (Manager of the Spring Bank Community Centre, Hull )

I moved to Hull with my parents in 1993 when I was just 13 years old, from a little village called Hunmanby, just near the popular holiday resort Primrose Valley. I must admit that my first impressions of Hull were not good, but over the last 12 years I've really come to love living and working here. Hull is a very multi-cultural city and always has been - ever since the docks first opened over 500 years ago. Read more...

Opinions - Hull By Lee Cassanell

	Hull is a town of apathy and idiots brimming with all kinds of degenerate scumbags that should be beaten to a bloody pulp and sterilised at birth. Most of the citizens have next to no communication skills, they are backstabbing ego maniacs who think just because they mumbled their way through a Look North interview or have been in the Hull Daily Mail Read more...

Opinions - Hull By Jeni Edge

I have been told by Channel 4 that I should not take the programme The Best and Worst Places to Live seriously, it is intended to be light-hearted and just a joke. But it is irresponsible of the media to claim that they have no impact, and if there is a joke the laughter is at the expense of the poor. To blight an entire city and excuse yourself because it was not meant seriously is no more acceptable Read more...

Opinions - Hull By Ted Robinson

	I have lived in Hull since 1996. I have had my car broken into seven times, I have also been violently robbed in the street and most of the people I know here have been burgled. So YES, Hull deserves to be at the bottom of the pile (and in all cases, the police proved to be useless)!