What do Hull in East Yorkshire and Maribor in Slovenia have in common?
Hull is a crumbling entrepôt on one bank of the murky Humber River and the other straddles the lovely Drava River in the Slovenian mountains. So, picturesqueness they don’t have in common. House prices are reasonable in both places, but that’s not what I’m driving at.
Remarkably, the football teams in both cities are owned by the same person: Acun (pronounced ‘Ajun’) Ilicali, the multi-billionaire Turkish owner of Corendon Airways. He is a hero in Hull due to our promotion to the Premier League and detested in Maribor due to lack of investment in the team. So, the footballing similarity ends there.
No, I am referring to something else that, according to my recent From the Man Cave XXXVII column, I believed they did not have in common. In that column I referred, regarding Maribor, to the lack of hijabs and migrants in general. Sadly, in only 12 months since my last visit, things have changed radically.
Hull is, increasingly, a city of migrants – visibly. Our Muslim population is 6% and they come from Eastern Europe, South Asia and Africa. The latter two groups are identifiable by the colour of their skin, and these groups now monopolise the takeaway delivery service; you know, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and the like. They take to the streets with brightly coloured boxes strapped to their backs and can be seen across the city whizzing about on e-bikes.
Certain areas of the city, especially the centre, have been taken over by these high-vis horsemen of the takeaway apocalypse. The general public can no longer rest their weary legs on the benches in the pedestrianised areas of Hull, as these will either be occupied by delivery workers or have their e-bikes propped up against them.
And what about those e-bikes? They are enormous contraptions and whatever speed regulation they have is clearly disabled as they can be seen overtaking cars – on the inside – as they use the cycle lanes. I swear I have seen some doing 50mph; the rider has no helmet and, inevitably, they are masked.
These bikes, along with e-scooters, are completely illegal, yet the police do nothing. They could just turn up at the city centre benches where these characters accumulate and take the lot of them off the streets. But they don’t, and no prizes for guessing why that might be. I guarantee if the gig-economy was staffed by young white men, then they’d all be back on pushbikes before you can say ‘Islamophobia’.
Turning to my beloved Maribor where I have just spent the week, whereas once there were a few delivery people on pushbikes with boxes strapped to their backs, the streets have now been taken over by the brown-skinned warriors. I say ‘brown-skinned’ because that is what they are. They are clearly not locals. I pointed this out to a local colleague who affirmed my observation, and told me that once these delivery jobs were held by students trying to make some extra cash.
I spotted a few locals on bikes still making deliveries, but the volume of takeaway delivery bikes has noticeably increased and, in common with Hull, these are largely huge e-bikes going at high speed. At least in Hull they have long straight roads to take to, but in Maribor – which delights in a network of narrow alleys festooned with bars and restaurants – these blighters weave in and out of people strolling about, taking in the evening air and they don’t compromise on their speed. I predict a terrible accident involving a child or an elderly person (e.g. me!) before long.
And, as in Hull, when waiting for a call to deliver, the warriors have commandeered an area in a corner of the main square where they occupy the benches and park their machines. In parallel, I was conscious of a great many more women with hijabs in Maribor indicating that their migrant Muslim community has grown and grown rapidly.
Whether in Hull, Maribor or any other medium-sized European city, the pattern seems remarkably similar: more migrants, more delivery riders, more e-bikes and more visible signs of cultural change. The political class insists that we are imagining it, that diversity is our strength and that nothing fundamental is changing. Yet one only has to sit for half an hour in a city square and watch who passes by to conclude that something profound is happening before our eyes. The only real question is whether anyone is still permitted to mention it?
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Funny you mention that. The local Sainsbury’s are making good use of these delivery drivers. On a visit there yesterday I had one pull out in front of me. He barely looked to see if the road was clear. The second one cut across me in his haste to turn left into a road that he wasn’t even sure was the correct one for him. They are a blight on the roads. Thank you very much Sainsbury’s.
That description of Hull could have been Glasgow city centre. Sauchiehall Street is full of these bikers racing along day and daily – and I’m sure in the evenings too, but I avoid the city at night: an occasional visit to the Concert Hall doesn’t involve walking on the main shopping roads. Because I’m hard of hearing, I’m always taken aback when they suddenly appear alongside me; I’ve escaped injury so far but having to stay on red alert spoils what used to be an enjoyable afternoon in town.
And another phenomenon which is a hallmark of Glasgow, and probably other UK cities and suburbs, is the fact that the increasing number of beauty salons and Turkish barbers everywhere are staffed (and probably owned) by migrants. I suppose they help one another to get into business, which is natural enough, but there is no doubt about the visibility of which the author writes. Glasgow doesn’t look like Glasgow any more, as, it seems, Hull doesn’t look like Hull – and I suspect this is true right across the UK.
Unless the Government decides to put money into rebuilding some of the countries overseas from where the migrants hail, legal and illegal, so that they want to return to their homelands, I can’t see any way that this situation will change. The demographic change which we have been witnessing over recent years, is, it seems to me, here to stay – because that is what the politicians want, for some unfathomable reason.
Please remember, the Humber is NOT a river, it’s an estuary and part of the British coastline. Hull isn’t though a seaside resort, whilst Cleethorpes on the other side of the very same estuary is.
E-bikes and scooters are a real menace in Hull, both solutions (seizure by police or locally legalising usage in cycle lanes only with approptiate mandatory insurance and helmets etc.) is met with ‘I don’t think so mate’ by Humberside Police and Hull City Council, yet I suspect if this 66 year old whitey used one to whiz between home and swimming pool, I’d not be free from their attention.
Something I still completely fail to understand is this – who orders fast food so often that so many of these delivery bike riders are kept in business? On those occasions (now much rarer becuase of price hikes) when I order a Chinese or Indian takeaway NB always by ‘phone from an establishment that also is proper restaurant and where I’ve eaten myself, the delivery is always by car -sometimes driven by restaurant staff or if not, more often than not, a white British person. Never has my ordered meal ever been delivered by a bike rider.
Is it only the terminally lazy/’unable’ to cook who have Deliveroo and similar on speed dial and use it much like in the past people had daily milk deliveries to their door?
Do the Police get bike deliveries to the Station or their car on stakeouts? That may explain reluctance to seize e-bikes. Many Police Persons now look as though they are themselves McD/KFC addicts (and resemble Deliveroo riders, but with more beards and tattoos, far more than the smart Dixon of Dock Green or Z Cars PCs of old).