IS IT just me or do others find it increasingly hard to work out exactly what people south of, say, Sheffield really think of the concept of a Northern Powerhouse?

The notion of the North having any power at all other than coal and steam seems to be one that surprises many, even if they have previously braved these climes for a holiday or just come to watch Lycra-clad hordes of cyclists chasing each other up hill and down dale.

I ask because of a press release - one of many thousands each month - that dropped into my e-mail headed with the staggering revelation that it’s “Not so grim up North.”

Its purpose was to inform us that “two thirds of Brits rate their happiness at seven out of ten” and that Newcastle (with 72 per cent) is the happiest place in the UK, apparently.

Well that may be the case on Friday and Saturday nights but, in my experience, it’s not such a jolly place the rest of the time.

But then, I’m only one person and the survey that revealed these shocking facts about us northerners (Sheffield was second; Leeds, third; Manchester, fourth; and only Bristol dared to crack a southern smile in fifth place) was compiled from a poll of 2,000 people (out of 65 million......)

“It’s only a bit of fun” you cry and, yes, of course it is. In fact, the reason we apparently need to know all this is to help justify a new advertising campaign by Gala Bingo.

Although if you’re in Birmingham, Norwich or Glasgow (too far up North, presumably) you might not be too amused to find you’re at the bottom of the heap for happiness.

But in the bigger picture, falling back on tired old cliches like “It’s grim up North” just helps to perpetuate the myth, even if you are misguidedly using it to promote a positive message.

Why? Because people really believe it - especially if they haven’t tried it for themselves. We all know the damage that has been done to Bradford over the years because of the long-standing image that has been allowed to develop and grow of a place of dark, satanic mills, racial stereotypes and fading industry.

It’s an image that has cost this district billions of pounds over decades in lost investment; an image that made redeveloping its retail heart tougher than just about anywhere else; an image that has kept business and jobs and, therefore, economic prosperity and higher standards of living at arm’s length.

Bradford is at last fighting back from that and as someone who has edited this newspaper for nearly a quarter of a century, I can honestly say that I have never before felt a tangible wave of optimism like the one that exists in this city and district today.

But it takes more than just hope, expectation and belief in the local community to see it through.

We need others to believe in us and our ability to change and grow and as long as there are people out there deliberately reinforcing stereotypes, our hopes of taking control of our destiny and driving change will always be harder to fulfil.

And that goes, on a larger scale, for the Northern Powerhouse. In many ways, Bradford already is a northern powerhouse and so is Yorkshire as a whole but it’s convincing those who hold the purse strings in the home counties that we’re worth investing in that remains the toughest task.

A glimmer of hope, perhaps, can be found in another PR survey that dropped this week which claims to show that Yorkshire residents take two years less on average than people in the rest of the UK to “find themselves” and “feel comfortable in their own skin.”

The “research” also says that our sense of identity starts to fade at the age of 57. I was born in 1959 - so I guess it’s all just too late to give me any cause for optimism...