My name is Ian Pennell and I live and work near Alston in the beautiful North Pennines. I work as a part-time Bookkeeper. I live at the farm where I was brought up, just myself and my elderly father. My mother passed away in January 2021.
I lived and worked in Lancaster following my graduation with a degree in Environmental Science from Lancaster University in 1992; since then I had a number of jobs in old people’s homes and hotels, which did not make use of my degree. Then, following completion of an Accounting course a few years ago I am now a Book-keeper based near Alston, in the North Pennines!
Having been brought up in rural north-east Cumbria (and also lived just to the south of the county for some years), I am familiar with issues affecting rural life and communities and this forms a basis of my Website: City-based corporations like the BBC and ITV.Plc (ITV1 Border being the notable exception), tend to have limited understanding of large rural areas of northern Britain that are little- covered (complete with their own local issues). Thus these matters affecting rural areas often go un-reported and local viewers in those areas unrepresented simply because their populations are lower and they do not vie for the attention of urban matters in the same way.
I have been interested in trying to rectify the short-comings in Regional Television in large rural counties in the North of England like Cumbria and Northumberland since suffering the experience of seeing most of Cumbria chopped out of BBC1 North West Tonight back in 1991- when I was studying at Lancaster University- and thereafter not only not being able to find out what was going on nearer home (I was, as already mentioned, brought up on Alston Moor in rural northeast Cumbria). There was also little coverage immediately local to Lancaster and South Cumbria, but rather a lot of coverage of Manchester, Liverpool and Cheshire.
NORTHWEST IS NORTHWEST 