‘Our kids are our future’
CELEBRITIES BACKING CASH FOR CONNECTIVITY CAMPAIGN
EMMERDALE stars and Spice Girls’ Mel B are backing the Cash for Connectivity campaign in a bid to provide free internet for children to continue their education while at home in lockdown.
Launched last month, the campaign has seen news providers across the North set out with the aim of raising £1.2m to help provide free internet dongles to 100,000 disadvantaged households.
The devices can connect laptops and up to five other devices per household to the internet.
Hull Live and Hull Daily Mail have joined forces with our fellow titles to support the campaign.
The emergency
Celebrities are backing the Cash For Connectivity campaign fundraising campaign aims to provide free internet for many of an estimated 3,000 children in Hull and the East Riding who have no internet access and another
5,000 who rely on a mobile phone to get access online.
An estimated 31,322 children in Yorkshire and the Humber have no access to the internet, according to new analysis from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership based on ONS and Ofcom data.
Since launching, the campaign has gained support from Yorkshire-born stars.
Leeds-born Mel B told Yorkshire Live she “wholeheartedly” supports the campaign to buy internet dongles so children can access online learning at home.
“I have two children who are being schooled at home during the pandemic. It’s not always easy.
“But as tough as it can be for parents and kids, I am very much aware how lucky my kids actually are to have easy access to laptops, wifi and data.”
Mel added: “I’m a working class, mixed race woman from Leeds and I know what it is like not to be able to compete on an equal playing field.
“Our kids are our future and it’s so important we help those who need it now which is why I wholeheartedly support this campaign.”
Emmerdale stars Dominic Brunt, Zoe Henry and Mark Charnock have also backed the campaign.
Mark, known for playing longrunning Emmerdale character Marlon Dingle wrote on Twitter: “A brilliant campaign. Good luck.”
And football legend and commentator Chris Kamara shared his support online.
He said: “What a worthwhile challenge this is. The children are our future so, if you can, let’s all get behind it and help to hit the target.”
Emma Hardy, Hull West and Hessle MP and the Shadow Minister for Further Education and Universities, has also shown her support.
She said: “In this latest lockdown, parents and children are finding themselves in a situation where they do not have full access to remote online learning.
“In the first lockdown last year, I started a laptop appeal, which saw hundreds of laptops donated from businesses and people from across Hull, which were wiped to industry standards, and provided to children in need across the city.”
■ To donate, visit www.gofundme. com/f/hull-cash-4-connectivity
A FATHER-OF-TWO has put a 6ft detailed replica of a North Sea ferry proudly on display at his house after 4,000 hours of painstaking work.
Carl Barlow, 57, has been working on the laborious project to create a 6ft model of the MV Norstar for the past three years, and he still hasn’t put the finishing touches to it.
Carl has painted every component of the replica, whose real life counterpart operated between Hull and Europe for almost three decades, by hand to a scale of 1/150.
He has even deviated away from the instructions in the model kit and extended the ship by eight inches to keep it to scale of the original ship which was “stretched” by 21 metres.
Carl, who has been making models for more than 40 years, just has the small matter of finishing 33ft of handrailing around the model, which he hopes will be complete by August.
He said: “Everything has been made separately and painted then put together.
“I got the kit in 2018 but put it on the back burner a bit.
“Last year, I picked it back up and really got into it. I’ve done an hour or two at a time after work and spent time on it at the weekend.
“All the easy bit has done, it’s just the hard bits now like the hand-railing, which itself takes about half a day to do just one foot because of the detail involved. It would have been quicker to build a real ship.”
Carl, a gardener who lives with his wife Beverley, 68, in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, said the project was “time consuming, but well worth it”.
He used to make Airfix models of planes as a youngster before moving onto larger models as he got older.
The hull of the boat is made from fibre glass, which he cut in half before inserting an additional section to extend the length of the model.
The decking is made of a wooden superstructure, which was inserted into the ship and each hole for the hand railing individually.
Carl added: “I have done a few ships over the past 30 years on a smaller scale but it has been a while since I’ve done a boat.
“I’ve always loved models and fixing things, I used to go to antiques fairs as a kid and buy a dinky toy and put it together, restore it and sell it for a profit.
“I could make a living out of it, but then it wouldn’t be fun anymore.
“I found a guy online who started making kits of car ferries the first kit he produced was the spirit of Amsterdam.
“He put online that he was going to produce the Norland and my ears pricked up because I have been over to Rotterdam a few times on that ferry.
“When I saw it had the blue and white livery, I realised it was the ship that had been stretched by 21 metres so I knew straight away it needed to be longer.
“He designed a centre piece which was twice the size I wanted so I had to cut that down.
“I did the same thing with the model that they did with the actual ship, I cut it in half, added the centre piece, then glued it back together.
“I stretched it by eight inches to make it to the scale of the original ship. It was important to me that it was exactly to scale.”
Carl, a former Army reservist, will keep the delicate model on display in a special room at his house.
“It is designed to be a radio-controlled ship that can be used on water, but it is too delicate to sail due to the modifications,” he said.
Instead, he hopes it will one day be on display in the P&O ferries terminal in Hull, where the original ship used to set sail from on crossings to Holland.
He added: “When it’s complete, I’m hoping to get a glass casing for it to be on display like a museum piece.
“It will stay in my display room, the wife won’t have it in the living room.
“I might even get in touch with P&O Ferries to see if they want to have it on display at their port in Hull for six months of the year.” has had to be drilled