David Parkin welcomes the New Year and bids farewell to Bernard Dineen

HAPPY New Year.

After what seems like the longest recession in living memory, I think we all deserve a year to look forward to with healthy anticipation rather than trepidation.

While certain sectors are still going to have mixed fortunes – retail and property still face plenty of challenges – let’s hope the positive momentum that many businesses ended 2013 will kick in early this year. Last year only seemed to get off the ground after Easter – far too late to allow businesses to gather momentum.

I sense everyone will be hitting the accelerator when they get back into the office – most appear to have taken an extended Christmas and New Year break and return to the office on Monday.

But before we look too far into the future, I’ll beg your indulgence to take a moment and look back at last year. I’d like to be able to give you a roll call of highlights, but it works out a bit differently than that.

I got a slap over the knuckles from reader Duncan Barr for an item in my last column of 2013.

In a throwaway item about Christmas cards, I said that most of us receive less than we used to.

“I think you mean ‘fewer’: talk about declining standards,” said Mr Barr, putting me right in my place.

Sadly, that type of written equivalent of a clip round the ear wasn’t a one off.

The same column included a comment that e-cards just aren’t the same as receiving the real thing.

A response arrived swiftly from entrepreneur Richard Doyle, who founded Yorkshire-based computer business Esteem.

“David, don’t be so humbug about ecards, its a great idea if the equivalent costs of the cards and postage go to a worthwhile charity, I am sending £590 to St Leonard’s Hospice in York this year,” he said, putting me in my place and making clear how many friends he has at the same time.

I thought I’d received a compliment from veteran stockbroker Keith Loudon of Redmayne-Bentley when I commented that most local councillors I’ve met looked like they couldn’t tie their own shoelaces.

“David, I like your shoelaces reference about local councillors. Some can’t and some can. The stars are a minority rather like journalists,” responded Keith.

I daren’t ask him which category he would put me in.

And then there was the story we ran about issues for firms in the meat industry. A BBC investigation discovered that pork chops sold in Tesco while branded British, were actually Dutch in origin.

One eagle-eyed reader commented on the photograph illustrating said story.

“Your picture is very obviously not of pork chops, but lamb chops.”

:::

SAD news arrived before New Year that former Yorkshire Post business editor and long-serving outspoken columnist Bernard Dineen had died.

Bernard died on Christmas Eve aged 90, just four weeks after his wife Constance passed away.

I never had the pleasure of working with Bernard, but when I arrived at the Yorkshire Post in 2000 his reputation as a well connected business journalist and entertaining speaker still loomed large over the place.

By then he had long retired, but still wrote a weekly column which managed to regularly keep the letters column full, and not many people disagreed with his pithy wisdom on events from local to international.

He had a great ability to surprise with his writing. Just when you thought you knew what his take on a particular political event or piece of history would be, then he would prove the contrary.

I invited him out for lunch and we spent a pleasant couple of hours at La Grillade talking journalism, business and Yorkshire. I singularly failed to glean any tips on how to be a decent business editor but that was probably because Bernard was far too modest to tell me how to do the job.

He was a titan of his time but also a kind and generous man.

Bernard Dineen’s funeral takes place on Friday, January 10 at 3.40pm at Lawnswood Crematorium in Leeds.

:::

ANOTHER former journalist who died over Christmas was Gerald Mortimer.

You probably won’t have heard of Gerald, he covered football and cricket for the Derby Evening Telegraph for three decades, famously typing Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s resignation letters when they left Derby County in 1973.

Tributes have poured in from the football and cricket world with many quoting from his match reports and interviews over the years.

I started my career as a junior reporter at the Derby Evening Telegraph and my abiding memory of Gerald was when he gazed down from the press box at Derby County’s old Baseball Ground home and saw me, as a guest of one of my parents’ friends, in the directors’ box in my best bib and tucker.

“What’s that boy in a suit doing there,” he thundered.
 
:::

AMONG the small collection of desk calendars received by TheBusinessDesk.com this year, my favourite is from Leeds Bradford Airport’s PR team.

The one disappointment is that it only features eight photos of airport director Tony Hallwood. Those months where his visage doesn’t feature will just feel so empty.

Have a great weekend, and an equally successful, healthy and prosperous 2014.