The city has joined the ranks of Vancouver, Reykjavik and Amsterdam and is the only UK city to make the list.
While it’s polite to congratulate Hull (after all, it does feature somewhere called the Land of Green Ginger and used to have John Two-Jags Prescott as an MP) for overtaking some of the world’s more glamorous cities, we feel it only fair to remind our readers that Hull has been referred to as grim, for as far back as anyone (well, almost anyone) can remember.
It suffered from high unemployment and crime and as recently as last year it was declared the second worst place to live.
Encouragingly £25 million is being spent on the city centre in preparation for hosting the UK City of Culture event in 2017.
There seems to be lots to celebrate for the people of Hull, but at the same time that the news hit the press a shooting was reported at a McDonald’s car park in the city centre.
James Clark
