To be sick of Southern Eastern bias in the media with regards to the weather?

[MintyChapstick]

We awoke this morning to news of torrential rain and storms in the South East, ok then, well you know it's not all that unusual to have electrical storms and heavy rain during the summer months but there you go.
The Daily Mail naturally has a headline enttiled, 'battered Britain'. Don't you mean battered South East? There also a story about Britains going to the polls in horrific weather, nope once again it's only in the bloody South East!

Earlier today someone started a thread expressing concern about voter turnout due to the bad weather and expressed genuine surprise when most other posters stated that it was glorious where they were. It's like the UK begins and ends in the South East in their minds.

It was the same during half term week, lots of stories about how terrible the weather was but it was baking hot in Wales and I even got very badly sunburned in Chester Zoo!

I know the South East has its head stuck up its arse a bit, but the UK is a very big place and just because the weather is bad/good in London it doesn't mean it's the same everywhere does it?

[70isaLimitNotaTarget]

I'm in the SE (well Essex actually) and I saw the TV coverage of the flooding in Barking There was a lady stuck on her stairlift after floods and lightning strikes who said she'd never seen such flooding in all the years she lived there.

And yes, we see the news about the flooding in York, a few years ago Hull, Leeds last year, Somerset a couple of Christmases ago.
And the snow (which we don't tend to get)

So , when the SE is badly affected it is News, like everywhere else.

It was bloody chaos yestereday, the A13 was closed.
Many Underground stations were closed.
OK, it doesn't affect other areas, but it affected us.

So YABU

[SquirmOfEels]

I thought of this thread this morning.

London-centric reporting is not an indicator of what is happening in the rest of the country.

[WordsAreWind]

To be fair, the DM and other tabloids have headlines like "Britain to be covered in snow" when there's only snow forecast in some mountains in the far north of Scotland.

[Farandole]

Well the weather down here (London) was biblical today. It took me ages to get home - my 30 minutes commute took well over 2 hours as tube lines were not running, tube stations were shut and trains were cancelled. Bad weather is known to influence voter turnout, so it's entirely newsworthy.

[MaureenMLove]

Bobbin. This was the scene in Parts of London this morning! Not sure I'd have driven through it!

[TSSDNCOP]

I can tell you for a fact the weather here in the SE is awful. There is a lot of flooding. It will inevitably stop some people voting not least because polling stations are closed.

But then I don't see why it can't be reported, I seem to recall many, many pages about those poor folk affected by floods in northern towns at Christmas and in previous years in the midlands.

[BobbinThreadbare123]

I'm from the NW and I'm down in the SE ish for a few days for a conference. The utter panic and inability to deal with the weather is very surprising to me. We have rain like this quite a lot and don't pay any mind to driving through puddles, unlike the drivers I've seen today who are swerving wildly onto the other side of the road to avoid one.

[vienna1981]

This has been going on for decades. Years ago when Francis Wilson was the forecaster on BBC Breakfast Time, his forecasts were almost exclusively south-orientated. The weather for the bulk of the UK was, more often than not, casually referred to as 'elsewhere ' for a few seconds at the end of the southcast.

[Threepineapples]

People living in the SE are not responsible for Daily Fail headlines

YABU

[mollie123]

According to the census just under one-third (32%) of all people in England live in London or the South East
so 2/3 of all people in England alone do not live in London
However as so much power and money is concentrated there I suppose it is inevitable that the rest of England and the other countries in the UK are largely ignored unless something momentous occurs there.
wonder how many mumsnetters are in that one third? Quite a few I would imagine.

[PortiaCastis]

It has been lovely and sunny here in Cornwall and no rain forecast dreckly.

[MaureenMLove]

FYI, London and the South East are getting battered again! . It's shit down here in wonderful South East London!

[vikingorigins]

I lived in Kent for many years and got utterly sick of the London-and-the-South-East attitude. The South East isn't just London, so on that point YABU.

[anyname123]

It's not just weather though is it? Watching the BBC you'd think England had the only sporting teams, only London has an elected Mayor and so on. The other home nations barely get a mention a lot of the time.

[MargaretCavendish]

I know the South East has its head stuck up its arse a bit

recently one of them seriously said to me "I fort Swindon was some shitole ap norf till I ad to go there, then I thought it weren't that bad"

Do you generally like to make blanket judgements about large groups of people based on your own prejudices?

Do you normally think it's funny to laugh at regional accents?

Maybe it's not just people from the South East who are ignorant...

[ThornyBird]

YY thetemptationofchocolate

[Corialanusburt]

Sunny and dry here. I listened to a Radio 4 weather bulletin recently and the North West was not mentioned. It literally didn't exist.

[nonline]

I understand (not in SE, quite) but come winter the north seems to be featured for snow which we rarely get.

What grates on me more is how overcrowded, pebbly Brighton beach is always used to represent sunny days - there are so many gorgeous, sandy, quiet-but-popular beaches around.

[Crunchymum]

As others have pointed out it's to do with population numbers and voter turn out.

So no floods in Birmingham last week wouldn't have received the same exposure.

I normally walk, rain was so bad I was going to get the bus but when I left the office I actually had to get a cab!!! It was that bad. No way would I be going home via the polling station already done the postal vote

[Hastalapasta]

NBU, fabulous in North Yorkshire today, yesterday too. Don't worry, will be back to normal soon.....

[GraciesMansion]

There was quite a lot of flooding in Birmingham last week but that wasn't reported in the same 'end of the world' style as today's rain in the SE has been.

[FuckOffJeffrey]

AliceInUnderpants yes to this (only our school actually breaks tomorrow at lunchtime for summer holidays)

Its not just the bad weather that gets reported though. In forever seeing headlines like 'Britain set to be warmer than Spain this weekend' etc but in actual fact its just the SE England and the rest of the U.K. Could be under 6 ft of snow but it still wouldn't make the headlines.

I also have noticed that bad news gets reported as Scotland but good news as British. For example Andy Murry - when he is doing well the media calls him Britians Andy Murry but if he loses he is reported as Scotland's Andy Murray.

[Titsywoo]

I think it's because most people in the south East are supposedly voting remain so results would be skewed if less voted here since there is a large concentration of people.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I met a man once who had never been off Manhattan and never intended to. I do find that attitude odd.

[thetemptationofchocolate]

If you live in the West of the country you are properly stuffed as the presenter usually stands in front of that bit of the weather map so the viewer can't even look at the symbols to see what the forecast is.