MIDDLESBROUGH football club owner Steve Gibson will not be pleased by the first national newspaper review of his pride and joy, Rockliffe Hall at Hurworth.

The Sunday Times’ deputy travel editor Matt Rudd gave the £60m hotel development a bit of a going over in a piece headlined “Rockliffe Hall: it’s bling up north”.

Mr Rudd took exception to the new extension which he described as having been designed by a Barratt Homes architect on a off-day. He also described some £40,000 chandeliers as hideous and generally thought the place a bit tasteless in a footballers’ wives-type way.

He did gave the thumbs up to a meal in Kenny Atkinson’s Orangery restaurant (the best he had ever had) but didn’t like the piano player who he said at one point he wanted to shoot.

Spectator was glad to see the piano player get his own back on the comment section of the Times’ web site. He turned out to be Dean Stockdale, widely respected in the region, who wrote: “Don’t shoot the piano player” and pointed readers to his web site: deanstockdalemusic.com.

Very tasteful Mr Stockdale sounds too.

Policy point

The meeting to elect the new leader of the Conservative group of Hambleton District Council – and therefore the council’s leader – was a very civilised affair I hear.

The actual voting was not revealed so as not to hurt the loser (if the margin of victory was large) or undermine the victor (if it was very close).

Coun Neville Huxtable appears to have swung it his way with the statement that “politicians make the policy and officers deliver it”.

Wasn’t it always thus, you might say? Well, there is a view that the previous leadership regime, including Coun Brian Phillips who was defeated by Coun Huxtable, let the officers call the tune too much.

Hue and cry

Spectator has a question.

Crime rates are falling, we are told. Why then is the incidence of police cars with sirens blaring and lights flashing so much more prevalent these days, and not just on Friday and Saturday nights?