‘Every planet has a north’

[f4f3]

 I missed this report yesterday, from a prominent right wing think tank, but it seems to have caused quite a stushie in the English media. The Guardian, for instance, turns over a chunk of its culture supplement to attempting to refute the finding (and here I paraphrase) that if you live in the North of England you should put all your wordly goods in a wheelbarrow and move to London. Or Oxford or Cambridge. Actually, I’m not paraphrasing much.

 

If you read the report from a Scottish perspective it’s good for a laugh.

 

The report only talks about England, despite its claim to “offer new policy proposals for regenerating Britain’s cities”, and the assertion that these proposals are drawn from research on 15 towns and cities throughout Britain, including Glasgow.

 

Despite this, it says nothing at all about Glasgow. In developing their thesis that coastal towns are at an economic disadvantage since they are at the end of the line, they take Hull and Sunderland as examples  but ignore Glasgow and Edinburgh.

 

“The North”, in the context of this report is not Glasgow or Edinburgh, it’s not Inverness, far less Kirkwall or Lerwick, it’s all those places south of the border but north of London– Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sunderland.

 

Normally this wouldn’t be of particular relevance – “The North” is recognizable English terminology for anything north of Watford, but south of the Scottish border, and although it may raise a chuckle from up here it doesn’t cause confusion.

 

But ignoring Scottish cities in this report deals a fairly fatal blow to its conclusions, even when taken on its own definition of success, failure, and lack of being London.

 

(There’s a whole separate argument about the choice of criteria for success and failure, and whether the report fails sufficiently to recognize non-economic factors such as quality of life, happiness, stress and common civility, but I’ll leave that to others. It does advocate buidling golf course, though, since business men like golf. No, seriously).

 

The simple facts are that despite some variability within their boundaries, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen are all examples of successful cities (if we leave aside the £50 million hole in Aberdeen Council’s  finances), despite being “geographically uneconomic”. Over the last decade property values have risen, unemployment has fallen, and their populations have grown (I'm willing to discuss the definition of successful - Glasgow has a high crime rate and, in some areas, very low life expectancy, but a thriving service sector and low unemployment).

 

It talks about the impossibility of establishing a financial sector of any size outside London, ignoring Edinburgh’s status as just that. 

I’m not going to attempt to explain why Scotland has been ignored in this report, but it does highlight two things. One, that its conclusions are open to challenge and two, that they really haven’t got the hang of this “Britain” thing that they keep talking about.

Comments

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Apparently they should all move to Oxford and Cambridge.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2546265/Millions-of-new-homes-for-Oxford-and-Cambridge-says-report.html

I. just. can't.

I just can't begin to consider the insanity of that suggestion, leaving aside the planning laws, the green belt, the astronomical local house prices and the truly astounding commute time into the city; not to mention the slight detail that there are No Fucking Jobs here outside the university, the hospital and microchips (and even with the microchips, it's only the R&D; the manufacture's up in Silicon Glen). Twats. Oxbridge twats, I suspect.

BTW, David Cameron says the report is insane.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Well he should know insanity when he sees it. I love the fact that he's trying to distance himself from a think tank set up by the shadow education secretary and Boris' chief of staff...

[liadnan]

Not really that difficult for the leader of the Conservatives to distance himself from a report actually written by a Lib Dem, I think. (Tim Leunig, of the LSE)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Please never link me to a blog with such a scarey-ass user picture again. Although it may help me skip lunch.

Fascinating reading, though. He does seem to be a very strange kind of Lib-Dem, but maybe that's what all policy wonks sound like. And his prediction that oil prices will end 2008 lower than they began it is rather sweet.

[munchkinstein.livejournal.com]

Well if everyone abandons the "North" to settle just outside the M25 this will lead to a couple of things.
1) Walking holidays in the Lake District or the Pennines should be pleasingly quiet.
2) Alex Salmond, upon becoming High Priest Of All The Independent Scots, will be able to annex Northumberland, finally fulfilling William The Lionheart's ambitions, without anyone complaining.
We shall have Berwick once more.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that we should take back Newcastle. I mean, they made a mistaske, sure, but that was a long time ago and we should all be prepared to let bye-gones be bye-gones.

[psychochicken.livejournal.com]

One wonders where the confusion between 'North', 'England' and 'Britain' crept in: in the report itself or the press reporting of it...

I suspect the latter, and the fact that England and Scotland are being treated as separate for such purposes already is the main thing that's bringing me round to independence - if we're going to be ignored then we might as well get on with it ourselves (notice how the Englishman subtly lumps himself in with the Scots there)

As a Scouser I found the report offensive and grossly innacurate. But then it was in all likelihood delivered by a team who've never been North of the M25 boundary. Frankly there's about the proportion of deprivation and affluence in Liverpool as there is in London - the difference being that one has to be a lot more affluent to clasify as such in London than in Liverpool, which suggests to me in fact that Liverpool is actually BETTER OFF than London in terms of (what are the words they use?) 'achieving the lifestyles the people aspire to' or something like that. Every time I visit I'm amazed at the new development and hope in the city. That'll be one of those dead-in-the-water coastal cities they're talking about? Oh no, they only mean Sunderland and Hull. Does this apply to East coast coastal cities or just those two? Frankly I can name more than two areas of the South East that are rapidly disappearing down the toilet, and nobody's suggesting a strategic retreat from those.

Add in, as you point out, its complete ommission of Scotland (esp. Glasgow, where the same statement made about Liverpool applies) and the report becomes innacurate, incomplete and irrelevant.

What I'd like to know is who paid for it and did they get their money back.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Well the report was put together by a charitable think-tank. Obviously funded by clear-thinking parties who want to foster national unity.

I'd love to know where the authors were educated - do you think I'm being paranoid if I guess that they're all Oxbridge grads, and have never really left that world?

[munchkinstein.livejournal.com]

The LSE and Oxford. The editor went to University in Germany thought.
Having taken a quick look at the intro and conclusions of the report (I really am that bored) they have a couple of nice ideas (let local councils have free reign on regeneration spending to pick on specific issues and not incidentaly make each town different) but they do actually say that Blackpool is buggered.
Their initial idea, let industrial land in the South East be used to build houses, sounds reasonable to me. Its not green field land and it would, in theory, make houses cheaper and allow the lower paid to buy some where. And as they say less industrial land might help push business out of the area as they seek more and cheaper land to build on.
But then they go all social engineering and actively point out towns they think are not worth spending any money on at all. And so lose the lot somewhat.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

The focus on house prices in the SE is also starting to look a little quaint.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

two areas of the South East that are rapidly disappearing down the toilet

Perhaps they could relocate the Medway Towns to the Lake District.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

No, the Lake District is geographically disadvantaged (i.e. not in the South East).

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Maybe they could put them close to London then, and all their problems would be solved...oh, wait.

I think they need what oursin describes as the codfish approach.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

The codfish approach? Do tell?

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

A slap around the face with a large wet cod.

I've read parts of that report. It's a bloody essay, not a serious report. There's a comment about how, sadly, the journey between Oxford and Cambridge is 'tedious' because they should really be closer together; and how very few people work from home these days.

It makes me really mad actually. I live somewhere which has great quality of life, but it also has an extremely limited job market and a culture which is not artistic or entrepreneurial in any sense compared to places like Glasgow, Nottingham or Brighton.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

It does make me wonder why it got so much publicity - although, I guesss, "Silly Season" just about says it all really.

[deililly.livejournal.com]

Yesterday's comment to someone else who brought this up:
"Am I being thick in wondering why they think people can't have a decent or even high standard of living in places other than London? o.O I thought the idea of 'dynamic geography' was going out the window when the 21st century with it's internet, mobile phones blah de blah wandered through the door.

Then again I know fuck all being a Scottish peasant I guess.

(the other thought that strikes me is, is this just a very round about way for them to suggest they build cheaper houses around London? They could have just said without trying to piss on other cities which they have clearly never so much as passed through) "

I have tried reading the pdf and gave up due to blood pressure concerns. My rargh level was rising rapidly with each line!

Though I think now the reason Scotland was left out was that it messed up their ideas a bit. We have plenty of problems but I think our major cities are doing pretty well and piss on their regeneration doesn't work thing from a great height. Glasgow now is pretty damn different from the Glasgow I remember in the 80's.

And I liked Liverpool too damnit.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I liked Liverpool. Where has it gone then?

[deililly.livejournal.com]

Into a black hole of culture!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Ah well, I'll miss it.

[jen-c-w.livejournal.com]

I met their research director, guy in charge of environment a couple of weeks back. He was an utter twat. Typical unreconstructed thatcherite tory - as that report is.