I was brought up in the north, and I do and I don't relate to what you're saying.
My accent is pretty non-existent most of the time now. However if I'm visiting my parents or speaking to someone with a similar accent, I find it comes on. I can exaggerate it though 
.
I had a friend at uni who was from Scotland. Never knew by her accent until I'd seen her for a couple of years and she started talking about Scotland, and the more she talked the stronger her accent grew. It wasn't deliberate.
But I do find there is an attitude of "we're discriminated against and we're actually better" from a lot of the people I know well who live in the north. I get a lot of "don't you wish you lived back up here?" type comments.
My parents are convinced we live in a huge crime ridden area simply because it's south (in one of the police reports our area was in the bottom 5 in the country for crime, whereas their village crime rate is appalling when the known brothers are out of jail and not quite so bad when they're in jail)
Dm thinks your life expectancy on the M25 is about 19 seconds, whereas I find the roads round them a nightmare-they're inclined to have a sign saying "inner lane for A582 and A342" until the point where they put up hatchings where it's suddenly "A342 only" and you find you're syphoned off. They know the roads so find it fine. I know the roads down here, so find them fine. (well I do avoid M25 at rush hour if possible, but that's from common sense not self preservation)
Apparently in the south we have no nature, only air pollution, are rude and they think that we're in a permanent state of lockdown due to terrorist activity as well...
Which is odd because when they come down here they find we're actually right next to a protected area with rare animal/plant life and if they want more there are several areas within 5 miles. The pollution is no worse than where they are and I walk round our village saying hello to people around because we're pretty friendly even if they did move into the area less than 10 years ago (next village to my parents will still be referring to someone as an incomer after 25 years).
And they remark on it... and then they go back up north and have the same prejudice against the south by the time they're past Birmingham.
I think both areas have their good points and their bad points. There would be things I would miss if I went back there to live. There's things I miss about living there. But mostly they're pretty similar.