That people in the south think they are better than those in the north

[EatsShitAndLeaves]

That's it really.

I'm interested in your opinion.

Nathan there are no poor people in London, we're all bankers dontcha know?

Bankers or immigrants bleeding the rest of the country dry claiming benefits.

In my house we call it the Irony Curtain.

It runs somewhere through Birmingham. It's to do with sense of humour.

I'm a Midlander through & through (but sound like a southerner). My DH is also a Midlander (but sounds like a Northerner).

It's a fascinating subject winks

Ah well, we London elite like to embrace our immigrants, our 24hr services, great transport and ethnic diversity count on them of course I'm sure we get a better class of immigrant

I am a Northerner by birth and in my heart though I currently live in the Midlands. Anyone daft enough to think they are 'better' than me because their house is worth more or they feel their accent is 'posher' really isn't worth a moment of my time.
I have Southern daughters in law and five of my grandchildren live in Hertfordshire or Surrey and we share mutual love and respect.

By the way living in London is my idea of Hell!

I have never, ever met a southerner (I am one) who says they think they are better than northerners by default of being southern. I have never met a southerner who admits to even giving it any thought. I just think it exists purely as a figment of the imagination of some northerners.

On the other hand, I have met quite a few northerners who say they that southerners are snobby and up themselves. Based on what, I am not exactly sure. When asked there never seems to be a very concrete answer. It's just a 'feeling' that we all look down on them apparently.

mouse everyone's hell is different, I believe mine exists outside the motorway!

I live in the South. By which I mean the central belt of Scotland, which is 100 miles South of my birthplace.

My colleagues refer to me as being from the "Frozen North" as I start pining for snow in November.

Confused everyone at a conference in Manchester recently by complaining how long the train "down South" had taken.

It's all relative, innit.

PS I know Cornwall is in the "South" but I feel like it must be Narnia or something. All pointy and on the end. It looks cool.

DarthPlagueis

I'll shoot you down in flames for this one.

Most West End shows actually do a tryout in Manchester or Birmingham now with the full cast before transferring to the West End. We saw Blood Brothers with the original cast in the 80s before the West End got it. We also saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels before the West End and the world premiere of a play by Zach Braff, starring him (big star) in Manchester.

Oh and we saw Ghost the Musical before the West End too. Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks gets its European premiere in Newcastle, not London!

So your post is utter tosh.

I just think it exists purely as a figment of the imagination of some northerners.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with this.

Not just notherners, though – non-Londoners. I have family on the south coast and they definitely have a 'that London' attitude and a chip on their shoulders. It's all in their heads.

SapphireStrange

I don't know, I can sort of see why people think that way. For years and years the only accents you heard on telly were RP or London, and everything was set there except for stuff on ITV.

Even now there's an inherent London bias. I know it's the capital city but you don't get the same in the USA or Spain - they don't have everything focused around Washington DC or Madrid.

Plus there is a bit of truth in that Londoners have a specific set of problems most of us could only dream of. I remember seeing someone on twitter saying they'd got an amazing deal on a studio flat for £1200pcm and I was thinking "Christ, that's 4 times the mortgage on our 5 bedroom detached in the North!"

It's not though, all in people's heads. It's this idea that the North is barely considered at all, certainly not except as a place where you could buy a mansion for the price of a two up two down. It's hard to explain but in the North we are forced to consider the South. Incidents that happen in the South get deemed more newsworthy. It snows or floods in London and it's headline news on Today on Radio 4. Floods in York get a mention half way through the bulletin. In the North our representations in popular culture are often negative, poverty stricken back to back terraces, spewing chimneys, gritty ruffians with hearts of gold...like Kes, or Billy Elliot, or even Corrie to a certain extent. I remember the delight of Cold Feet as the first aspirational 'middle class' drama set in Manchester that I had ever seen. This gentle pervasive drip drip of representation is subtle but it leads people to think, like the friend I mentioned up thread, that there is genuinely no 'high culture' up North or like others on thread have mentioned, there are no jobs, no aspirations.

It isn't that Southerners as a homogenous group think they are superior. Of course that isn't the case. But it is the case that here is a divide in our country of influence and power, and Southerners don't often understand that.

Cross post with MrsMatt - we are on a similar wavelength :)

YY to Cold Feet. I remember being blown away by it because it showed that there is a world outside of London and we can be brilliant too. Queer as Folk was similar, because it showed the vibrant gay scene of Manchester and I really loved that.

Sadly, most media is still very London-centric. Even when it's filmed round here they try to pass it off as somewhere else.

I remember seeing someone on twitter saying they'd got an amazing deal on a studio flat for £1200pcm and I was thinking "Christ, that's 4 times the mortgage on our 5 bedroom detached in the North!"

I'm not sure having to find £1200pcm for a studio flat is a problem I'd dream of having, TBH.

It's hard to explain but in the North we are forced to consider the South. Incidents that happen in the South get deemed more newsworthy. It snows or floods in London and it's headline news on Today on Radio 4.

This is certainly true - and it even extends to more subtle stuff. The Vox pops and things like visits to schools on Radio 4 and 5 occur disproportionately in SE England.

SapphireStrange

I meant in the sense that they have an income good enough that 1200pcm
for housing is seen as a good price!

There are other ones though like people not being able to decide which of the 100s of cinemas they'll go to to watch a film. We just have the one here within 20minutes drive!

I'm sure it is the case that London gets more coverage than elsewhere because of the media being based here. On the other hand, my Scottish friend's rant about the Evening Standard being such a bad paper because it's so London-centric did slightly miss the point

And actually I do always wonder why on the traffic news there's endless updates about the A3971 in Renfrewshire and the B14857 outside when there's 15 million people waiting for Piccadilly line train which won't turn up because the line is bust and it doesn't get mentioned at all. If it's about number of people affected, you'd put the emphasis the other way around.

MrsM, it's all relative though, isn't it? You're likely earning more in London, so house prices seem higher to people living in lower-cost areas.

And I think people in London often pay out an awful lot of their income on the mortgage or rent, possibly more than those living in cheaper areas. I know I do.

On the cinema thing, I don't disagree; but you might be surprised at the number of times I've found myself with an unexpected afternoon or evening off, decided to treat myself to a solo cinema trick, and trawled through loads of listings only to find not a SAUSAGE that I wanted to see! Timing/cinemas' weird closing schedule is against you sometimes.

I know that's a first-world middle-class problem, by the way.

I have a number of cinemas that are convenient for me to get to, but Google always recommends by as-the-crow-flies distance, which is often much less convenient.

(if we are having cinema related first world problems)

When I lived in a small city there were two cinemas so I could just check them all.

When I lived rurally there was just one, so it was VERY easy to see if something I wanted to watch was on t a sensible time.

If I didn't live in London I wouldn't go to the cinema. I'd just go out every night at look at the stars and marvel at the lack of light pollution and the brilliance of my choice of abode.

And black snot. Why has no one mentioned black snot on this thread?

Limited you would have to make sure you chose somewhere not near many of the other large cities in the UK where the light polliution makes it impossible to see the stars.

I don't get black snot. I clearly absorb that black stuff instead. Healthy, I'm sure.

I don't either trills

Although my water is really cloudy lately, probally pumping some mind control drug in to keep us calm