Paul Shone
Paul belongs to: The Fishermen's Mission
Paul has been the Mission Man at North Shields Fish Quay since 2001. For him the work is a calling rather than a career.
Paul was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 16 December 2005. The interview took place at North Shields Fishermen's Mission and lasted 14 minutes and 6 seconds.
Changes at the Fishermen's Mission
"The centre, in the very near future, talking now Christmas 1995, or 2005, I should say, talking Christmas 2005, it’s unlikely that we will be in this building in 12 months time"
The centre, in the very near future, talking now Christmas 1995, or 2005, I should say, talking Christmas 2005, it’s unlikely that we will be in this building in 12 months time. Certainly the canteen will go very shortly- some time in the Spring or Summer, something like that- it will close. Because the need to feed the fishermen is no longer there and the vast majority of the people we are feeding are not members of the fishing community- that opens up a whole can of worms with VAT and charities commission and why we’re doing it and why we’re running the canteen and all sorts of thing. But it is also a problem with the legislation with catering. It takes an increasing amount of the mission man’s time to deal with these things. And staffing it is a lot more difficult now- staff have to be trained and we have to pay for that and we have to have enough of them to do it and staff are expensive these days, and there isn’t the turnover in the community, in the fishing community, to warrant keeping the canteen going.
The building as a whole has had its day- it needs a lot of money spending on it to bring it up to health and safety, environmental health and disabled access regulations so that has all got to be considered. And really, it’s beginning to become a bit of a white elephant, a bit of a money hole. I have to put a lot of money in it just to keep it going, when we could do the job with a much smaller, much compact, much more compact office.
When they built this thing there was no such thing as cavity wall insulation, and there is no insulation within the building- it’s a flat roof building and it costs an absolute fortune to run, to heat, especially this time of that year, all that’s got to be, you know, money’s got to be found. And it’s, it’s hard work looking after, it’s taking an increasing amounts of time that we really can’t afford to spend on it.
Paul has 12 memories in the memorynet:
Paul's memories with a Environment theme:
Paul's other memories:
The role of the Fishermen's Mission- How the Mission serves the fishing community
- The role of the Mission Man
- Changes on North Shields Fish Quay
- Changes at the Fishermen's Mission
The Fishermen's Mission- The True Cost of Fishing
- Fishermen's Mission display
- The Fishermen's Mission cafe
- Memorials to fishermen lost at sea
This memory has these themes:
Change | Community | The North East
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