A couple of stories in this week’s edition remind us of the importance of both looking forward and looking back.
On the one hand, as reported in our Holderness and East Riding edition – available in our online subscription for those in the Hornsea area! – the relaunch of plans for 10 micro-kiosks in Valley Gardens is a sign that Withernsea Town Council is still determined to invest in regeneration.
The project aims to give small businesses, start-ups and local traders the opportunity to grow – to test ideas, bring in visitors and add something new to our seafront economy.
As with any new scheme, concerns remain about whether they will be used year-round and how vandalism will be prevented. I do worry about the latter point in particular, and I really hope there are robust schemes in place to ensure the kiosks don’t become magnets for the usual idiots.
But the principle – affordable spaces for entrepreneurs, and a focal point for visitors – is one that deserves support.
On the other hand, I had the privilege this week of meeting Alain Crémieux, visiting our region from Paris.
As a child, Alain was hidden from the Nazis in wartime France by Sister Agnes Walsh, a Hull-born nun who was the great-aunt of our Hull FC reporter Ian Judson – whom I must also thank for the kind invitation to meet not only Alain but Ian’s mum and dad, too.
It was an honour to speak with Alain – and to hear him talk about Sister Agnes’s bravery as part of a vital tale that must never be forgotten, especially in these increasingly divided times.
If I think about potential threats to the survival of our community newspaper in the future, the one that stands out is not so much lack of advertising or sales, it’s the rise of extremism and misinformation.
It feels like we’re battling a never-ending tide of it online, as I alluded to in my column last week.
And when you have the world’s richest man interfering in British affairs and spreading propaganda far and wide, what can you do?
Well, and I know this is hard for those of us wedded to our devices, you could just put your phone down for a bit.
I sometimes joke about driving to the Shetlands and hoying mine into the ocean, but that’s a bit extreme, I know.
Pick up a paper, get a cuppa, and zone out from all the invidious rubbish for a bit.
Those 6in bricks in our pockets contain a hell of a lot of hate and bile, and one way of making it go away is just to stop looking at it.
People are losing their minds largely because of hysteria being whipped up on social media, and I wonder whether we’ll ever get to a time when humanity collectively says, “no more”, and we start gravitating back to more “traditional”, trusted forms of media.
That’s my faint hope, anyway.