The Bigger the Lie ...

Ben Houchen's Alternative Facts about the

Dorman Long Tower



Here’s a summary: the building had been granted listed status by Historic England, but that was done in a hurry by a junior employee who had never visited the site to see what a dilapidated state the tower was in. Houchen knew  that it was actually about to fall down because he’d read the structural engineer’s report that said it would £9 million to repair and even then would still fall down within 20 years, and would cost local taxpayers millions that should properly be spent on local services like the NHS. So, he had gone to the culture secretary to ask to reverse the junior employee’s mistaken decision. Now that it was out of the way, he would be able to get on with the job of starting work on the GE Renewables factory, which the tower had been in the way of. It was a sad day, but the future matters more than the past and his priority is to bring jobs and prosperity to the region, unlike Labour politicians who object to the demolition because they want to see the region fail.

The campaign group SCAM NE has produced commentary on what the structural engineers’ report – revealing that it is the product of only a visual inspection, that no carbonisation testing that would properly assess steel deterioration was carried out,  that the £7 – 9 million is not a costed estimate, but a ball-park figure; the list goes on. Crucially the report states that the tower was not at imminent risk of collapse, so rapid demolition was not required. 

That the cost of demolition fell to the STDC, while the cost of maintaining it would have had to be paid for out of local taxation is interesting, and also that local taxation would otherwise be used to fund the NHS. And were someone to show Ben Houchen a map of the site, he might see that the tower is on SSI land, while the GE factory is to be built on the former Cleveland Works. The two are definitely both at the South end of the site, but there is a large tract of waste ground between them.

If anything, the fact that the tower is now lying in bits on the ground is probably more of an obstacle to building the factory than had it been left standing, given that it’s between the South gate and the factory site. 

And many people would like that junior employee of Historic England that caused all the trouble to be brought out, so that we can all see who it is.

Except that, as it turns out, Historic England is not about to allow itself to be dobbed in it by Houchen.  A reader contacted them about the issue and got the following reply:

If you don’t like it, leave

By the time Houchen gets to the ‘obstacle’ argument, it’s no longer just the tower that’s in the way, it’s the people who want to save it as well. The rhetoric is familiar – ‘if you don’t like it, leave’. It’s the language of Brexit. Those who wished to save the tower now fall into the same category as the ‘citizens of nowhere’ and the ‘enemies of the people’. ‘Quislings’ even. 

In other words, the apparently liberal Houchen now demonstrates that he really has ingested the true spirit of Brexit and is quite at home trying to justify his actions, not on their own merits, but by demonising those who criticise him. There is no attempt at conciliation. Brexit demonology eschews any kind of mutual understanding.

But there remains risk to Houchen from this. Given that the veracity of statement has been so quickly undermined, doesn’t he risk alienating the public who have supporting him? The answer must lie in who the intended audience of his video is.

Frigging Eyesore



While the sound of the tower exploding may have been music to the ears of Ben Houchen, backing vocals to it were supplied by a hysterical choir of anti-conservation new-age Tories.

When the news came through that Nadine Dorries had rescinded the grade II listing for the tower, we published an article critical of the decision, and shared it on a number of sites. On one of the Facebook pages where we posted it, we received an enormous response, almost all of it hostile, either to the preservation of the tower, or to those who campaigned for it, or the author of the article. Here’s a selection of their original comments:

Comments such as these you will also find in the comments sections of the local papers. It is clear that the message that building conservation comes at the expense of jobs and investment has hit home. Conservation is backward looking. It is for the ‘Loony Left’. Working class people will have to pay for it even though they don’t want it. Nobody cares about it anyway. And the author of the article needs to grow up (or grow some. Or both):