... and the Walls Came Tumbling down

Scott Hunter

3 September 2021

Have some sympathy for Jacob Young , MP for Redcar. As  the news comes out that permission has been sought to demolish the Dorman Long Tower, he has been made a complete fool of by Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen. Young it is who is so enamoured of the tower that he has a picture of it on the wall of his office at Westminster. He put it there initially to remind of home, and of Redcar’s great industrial past. Now it’s there to remind him that he’s Houchen’s puppet. We suspect he’ll take it down when he gets back to his office after the holidays.

We couldn’t help noticing that his response to inquiries by the Northern Echo was little more than a terse ‘no comment’:

“"My personal opposition to the demolition is well documented, however the decision is now with the RCBC [Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council] planning and I won’t comment further until then.”

All we can suggest to him is that in future he read our articles, as we predicted that this would be the outcome in our 2 June article Iconoclasts of the Tees Valley . Had he taken the hint from us in June he would have had plenty of time to come with a more convincing statement.

You just can't help some people ...