That for all the talk of "leveling up" you are not going to stop many young people want to move to London?

[Rosehip10]

See hang wringing article from Simon Jenkins today:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/regions-london-northern-cities-young-people

How is making London take a hit economically going to help the UK at all? It will just mean less money for everything.

The way some people in Northern areas think, is that London is sending out gangs to kidnap graduates and young people and force them there. The pull of London for economic, social and cultural reasons is never going to end and many young people, understandable want that.

Wow. What a very, very weird idea.

@thecatfromjapan that's just the "national service was great, never did me any harm, it made borstal boys and public school boys work together" type argument.

The way some people in Northern areas think, is that London is sending out gangs to kidnap graduates and young people and force them there. The pull of London for economic, social and cultural reasons is never going to end and many young people, understandable want that.

But I think it is true to say that there are, and have always been, plenty of graduates and young people who would prefer NOT to move to London but do feel forced to because so many of the job opportunities are there.

It is, Rosehip.

Weirdly (or not really, when you think about it,) I doubt many of them were old enough for national service.

It's the othering and de-person-ing that really worries me.

I think it's become more prevalent in political discourse - in public and private conversations. I see it all the time; I see it in this ongoing discussion about 'London'; I saw it when it was a distinct theme in pre- and post-Brexit discussions.

You can tell there's something weird going on because it's super-charged with all sorts of emotional baggage that is transported and dumped there, quite inappropriately.

People get nasty and insulting - as though they feel attacked by the mere existence of other views/ways of being in the world/choices.

It goes way, way beyond a question of work distribution.

And when something has become a proxy for a massive load of other issues, no logical 'solution' is going to resolve all those resentments and desires.

But, as I started off saying, it's the implicit move to 'othering' and 'de-person-ing', which I see all the time when this is discussed, that I find most worrying.

It's a problem. I suspect it has something to do with social media (but not everything to do with social media) - and I think we need to consciously work against it.

As a born & raised Londoner I love London but would happily move to another city. I don't necessarily buy into the high wages thing as lots of jobs in other cities pay similar or a bit less but housing costs are often lower. Unless your talking 150k plus jobs but that's not the case for many people.
What keeps me here is family.

What's mean spirited about it is asking a community to talk itself down. That instead of having pride in your city, even though it's got problems to say that it's shit in order to discourage the nation's youngsters from moving there

What's mean spirited about it is asking a community to talk itself down.
That's not the impression I got from that article at all. When your city dominates an entire nation surely you can stand someone raising the occasional question about whether that's wise?

London’s geography, well located in a small country, made it an international city. One of the few big international cities. There isn’t anything like it in Europe never mind the uk. People from all over the world are attracted to its theatres, music, arts, nightlife, history, architecture, commerce, politics and sense of opportunity. Despite overcrowding and high property prices.

Other European cities have some of these elements but rarely all. London competes with the likes of NY, HK or Tokyo, not Leeds. Levelling up is pointless. Other Uk regions need to create their own level, essentially in the way Scotland has. Comparison with London is pointless, it might as well be a different country.

The problem we have is that London generates a huge proportion of the UKs wealth and everyone relies on it. That’s why governments are wary of disinvesting in the cash cow. It’s a gamble on the scale of a German Reunification. Only we aren’t as well positioned to rise to that challenge, we don’t have money or national spirit for it.

But Londoners have paid lots into Crossrail via council tax
Council tax in London is the lowest in the UK.

I think if the (graduate, particularly) jobs are there, the candidates will move. When I was applying for legal jobs as a foreigner I had no idea that I could actually forge a career somewhere other than London; anyone who did take that route was somehow seen as settling, with all the negative connotations of that. I’m now married and with a (foreign) partner whose job keeps us here but I would love to move to one of the UK’s other major cities.

surely the rise in remote working will help?

I grew up in one of those cities where everyone left. A lot have gone back now that the city has been improved through various initiatives to encourage building, opening small businesses etc. But not before finding partners in the city they moved to. A lot of people underestimate just how many people move to places like London to pair up.

Just for clarification, one of the reasons council tax in London is comparatively low is because of economies of scale. For example I live in a building of around 100 apartments. We all take our trash to the basement and separate into bins. Once a week the building maintenance folk (which we pay for) take the trash to the street. So it takes the bin collectors approx 30 seconds to collect 100 households waste. And then onto the next. Our old building (across the street) was in a complex of about 500 - the maintenance took all the dumpsters to the same collection point. That’s 500 households in once go. Compare that to a street of 600 detached houses. Density matters when providing services. Plus London does things on different municipal levels which also create economies.

Other European cities have some of these elements but rarely all. London competes with the likes of NY, HK or Tokyo, not Leeds. Levelling up is pointless. Other Uk regions need to create their own level, essentially in the way Scotland has. Comparison with London is pointless, it might as well be a different country.

As someone who lives in one of these northern cities, I agree with this. BUT how can this be achieved when the majority of funding for infrastructure, building projects etc is concentrated in London and SE?
Decisions taken by politicians in London are not going to give northern towns and cities the autonomy they need to build and develop their own cultures and environments.

Just an aside though. Those friends of DD's who went to universities in the North (from homes in the South) have actually ended up working and living there post grad. All the Southern based university grads have ended up in London. With the push to get more Northern DC's into Southern uni's, will this create a counter pull back towards the South. I don't see much pull from the Northern Uni's to recruit Southerners in the same way.

As I pointed out, London might soak up spending but it is the cash cow that generates the national wealth. Before anyone decides to put that at risk they need to know that wealth can be generated elsewhere. Otherwise there isn’t any money to support even an unfair distribution.

There’s no easy or quick solution to that problem. I said that in my post. As the article says this is akin to Germany’s reunification investment. But we don’t have the wealth, economic conditions or national cohesion to achieve that. All Germans wanted reunification at any cost. People in the SE and London don’t easily ally themselves to northern cities or towns nor they to them.