PARKY: THE TORIES LEFT NORTH TO DIE T V star: Now I know why people voted f or Brexit
TV legend Sir Michael Parkinson has blasted the Government for leaving towns across the North of England dying on their feet”.
And the chat show king, who is fiercely proud of his Yorkshire roots, said he now gets why so many people in the North voted to leave the EU.
Referring to the Tories’ pledge to regenerate the region he said: “I get cross with these bloody politicians who talk about the Northern Powerhouse. It might be true in Leeds, it might be true in Manchester, but it clearly isn’t where I went to recently. I began to fully understand too, for the first time, why people voted for Brexit.”
Parky, 82, is backing a £5million fundraising drive to renovate the Civic Theatre in his home town of Barnsley. The presenter, a patron of the venue, is campaigning for donations to help make it a world-class destination for the arts by 2023.
He said: “Barnsley sits there and it’s vulnerable and what it deserves, and what these areas didn’t get was an adequate replacement for the pits.”
Parky said communities across the north of England were “dying on their feet” and added: “They need something to aspire to make it better for them to live there. He says his own father, a miner, loved dancing and the cinema when he wasn’t working at Grimethorpe Colliery. The star added: “There’s a problem, a gap -–The Civic would be part of the rebuilding if we are to regenerate these societies. Arts, music, particularly, is very important to our lives. Without music, without entertainment, where are we?” The Grade II-listed Civic was built in 1877. A modern extension was opened in 2009, but a third of the historic building remains unoccupied and its traditional front entrance and foyer is disconnected from the rest of the venue.