The Policy Exchange thing
13 Aug 2008 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karohemdDid I miss something? I'm far from being an expert when it comes to the economy but that just sounds stupid.
Shouldn't it be the other way around (encouraging people from the South to move North) to keep things moving up there? There's too much of a North/South divide already.
Even if there was space down here, how could they possibly afford it? I'm down here because my are of work is concentrated down here but I really wouldn't mind living up North. Lower cost of living, an actual countryside and so forth.
*shakes head*
Shouldn't it be the other way around (encouraging people from the South to move North) to keep things moving up there? There's too much of a North/South divide already.
Even if there was space down here, how could they possibly afford it? I'm down here because my are of work is concentrated down here but I really wouldn't mind living up North. Lower cost of living, an actual countryside and so forth.
*shakes head*
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no subject
Date: 13/8/08 10:03 am (UTC)... the report argues that Cambridge and Oxford will grow, and *should* grow, and that if that means turning farmland and other land around Cambridge into a bigger city, then that is what should happen ... and also that as property prices rise in the South, companies will look at how expensive industrial property becomes and will choose to move north where property is cheaper and will "pull" the people there with them.
It's an economic forum, and so they see everytyhing in terms of monetary pushes and pulls, rather than in terms of people ...
... they do say places like Newcastle and Manchester are doing well, but that can't be seen as enough justification for pumping vast sums of money into other areas where it will get used up without producing a vibrant local economy and community ...
... I haven't read the report or considered the evidence, so I have no idea how "true" any of its conclusions are ...
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Date: 13/8/08 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 11:41 am (UTC)Look at the attempts by the civil service to move departments out of London (as a cost saving measure). What do they get for their trouble? Huge recruitment problems, because none of the people they want to employ want to live in places like Titchfield and Newport.
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Date: 13/8/08 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 12:58 pm (UTC)When it comes down to it, the only money the government has to spend is *ours* (taxes, selling off public industries, selling off *our* oil reserves etc.) and we're currently choosing politicians who don't want to invest as much in the north ... so it's down to us to choose different politicians!
But also, since most of the money (I believe) is tax money ... if we take it from the 40% tax payers in the south to regenerate the north, well, what's in it for the southeners?
AND
If we move people from expensive South (where salaries have to be high to pay for high property prices and high every other prices) and move them up to places where salaries can be lower as house prices and everything else is cheaper, then salaries are lower and so tax income is lower and fewer people are paying 40% tax ... unless it produces a lot more people actually employed at reasonable salaries to make up for it, regenerating the north costs a lot of tax money up front and reduces the amount of tax revenue if it works ... so it's hard to see what the government get out of it.
Personally I want to work in a place which has good local amenities, good transport links and where a lot of my friends are ... which is why I lived in London and now live in/near Cambridge. Moving to Sunderland doesn't really make a lot of sense *for me*. Now Sheffield would be different as I have a number of friends there :-) or Glasgow or Edinburgh ...
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Date: 13/8/08 04:18 pm (UTC)We're currently choosing politicians from a small public-school-educated Oxbridge subset who think very similarly, and very similarly to Londoners. The media are mainly based in London, so all our political coverage is very London-slanted. Of course, therefore, we will end up with politicians who are really a choice between one London-centric policy and another. Politicians who want to invest in the north don't really get a look-in in parliamentary debate, partly because they are northern and therefore polite and won't interrupt and jeer like the others, partly because they have been selected out in the whole process of getting into high politics.
What's in it for the southerners is that the whole country's infrastructure isn't organised by a bunch of people who only leave the M25 every year to get to Heathrow. If we stopped centring all our organisational structures in London there would be buses that actually turn up, roads that don't eat cars, housing that doesn't flood, in the rest of the country, because the vested interests of the people who make the decisions won't all be vested in London. And when the south becomes more flood-prone and crowded, as it only can, the southerners will want to leave for somewhere, and that's the north. They will become northerners in the long term.
Actually, salaries are already low compared to all house prices everywhere. It would only get worse if the southernising of everybody continues. And actually, not regenerating the north is costing us quite a lot of money - in people who don't eat or exercise properly because there aren't enough facilities, in old people who can't live at home because they are miles of driving away from any doctors so stay in hospitals, in roads that stay unfixed for years and result in huge numbers of compensation claims, in antisocial behaviour of bored youths with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
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Date: 13/8/08 12:16 pm (UTC)Not in my case. I moved here because all the animation studios and publishers are down south, and a lot of the work needs to be face to face. I can ring ben up and ask for a meeting and I don't have to travel 300 miles to do it.
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Date: 13/8/08 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 02:57 pm (UTC)Too many jobs that don't need to be remain office based 9-5, which pushes up costs for everyone in the area, including those such as yourself that need to be in one place for one front-facing job.
If companies pushed homeworking, e-commuting and similar a lot more, then your cost of living would decrease substantially as well, whcih'd be good for everyone.
Haven't had time to read the full report, but I gather the media is misrepresenting it, it appears I know one of the authors (key author of Lib Dem tax policy amongst other things) so odds are there's a significant substance beyond headline bollox.
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Date: 13/8/08 12:01 pm (UTC)Please pass this on to any government departments and private companies you may interact with.
Cambridge ...
Date: 13/8/08 12:47 pm (UTC)I lived in west London and one of the reasons for moving up here was to get away from urban sprawl and the attendant "youf culture" that made evenings feel so threatening ...
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Date: 13/8/08 10:04 am (UTC)In my family's case we already did. In 1970. (And in my turn I moved even furher south, from Nottingham to London, in 1995)
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Date: 13/8/08 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 11:01 am (UTC)The north does need more money, because it has so much potential. The cost of living in the south is riduculous in comparison. but theres no jobs up here- well- in liverpool, anyways. they need more money to create more jobs, methinx.
man, i wish i understood this all better!
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Date: 13/8/08 11:15 am (UTC)300 for 3 bedrooms? You can't get one room in a shared house/flat for that money down here...
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Date: 13/8/08 11:53 am (UTC)but you can still get a good quality 2 bedroomed place right in the centre of town for about £500 a month, it really does pay to move up here if you can get a job!
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Date: 13/8/08 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 12:07 pm (UTC)it does happen up here too, i'm sure. but on the whole I find the North to be a lot more 'people friendly' than the south. Thats a huge generalisation though, based on my own experiences.
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Date: 13/8/08 11:43 am (UTC)Where do you imagine jobs come from?
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Date: 13/8/08 11:57 am (UTC)thats a very strange question. i'm not entirely sure what kind of an answer you were looking for.
when i lived in st albans, i got offerred a good 2 or 3 managerial jobs within a month of being unemployed, despite having very little managerial experience. In liverpool-it took about 6 months of solid looking to get a job- and even then the only one i managed to get was in a call centre. jobs in the north are considerably more difficult to get than in the south, in my experience, anyway.
no subject
Date: 13/8/08 12:06 pm (UTC)Perhaps I should be less terse! ;-)
Employment becomes available via businesses choosing to locate in a particular area. The reason most modern businesses don't generally locate in areas which need regenerating is because these are places where they will not be able to attract the staff they need.
It's cheaper to live in these places because fewer people want to live there. That's the nature of accomodation pricing. But this exact same property of these places is what puts businesses off. Hence my question.
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Date: 13/8/08 12:13 pm (UTC)but it boils back down to the main issue- if more money was ploughed into the northern cities, then they could be regenerated & therefore become more popular for businesses.
It's shocking the amount of derelict houses in liverpool- really nice looking, huge houses- some of which have never been regenerated simply because the council doesnt have the money to do it. its such a shame. It's the same with office space- and, I believe, it's similar in Manchester, too.
saying that, though- the council chose to spend the money they got for being the capital of culture 2008 for an elaborate opening night....a few huge tv screens in the town centre..that kind of thing, rather than using any of it to regenerate the city as a living or working space. so maybe they don't deserve the money in the first place. I don't know enough about this to discuss, really.
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Date: 13/8/08 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 02:21 pm (UTC)I have every sympathy for teh council. This always ussed to happen to me when I played sim city. I never worked out how to stop it. I usually just sent godzilla in in a tantrum and started a new city elsewhere. Maybe they should try that?
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Date: 13/8/08 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14/8/08 08:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 02:19 pm (UTC)I wonder if we can learn anything from comparing a very concentrated country, like France, with a fairly spread-out one like Germany.
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Date: 13/8/08 02:38 pm (UTC)Compared to the UK, in other countries you'll have less of a directional divide but still a rural/urban divide, due to geological differences. Industries naturally settle where the resources are and those are spread wider in other countries. Of course, the majority of Germany's heavy industries like steelworks etc. is concentrated in the West but there are numerous other industries spread across the country.
The area where I grew up is dying economically (while never having been very strong in the first place) because its main industry (pottery) can't compete globally anymore after the rise of Eastern Europe. There used to be government susisidies for supporting this border region while the Iron Curtain was still in place but after the Wall fell, it was a case of "Hey, you're in the middle of Germany now, you don't need that support anymore". That obviously wasn't true but nothing was done.
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Date: 14/8/08 10:37 am (UTC)But I don't know if something similar could ever really happen to a whole town, or a whole region.
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Date: 13/8/08 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13/8/08 04:21 pm (UTC)