To ask why the North is generally seen as ‘poor’?

[Jules585]

Discussing the clear north south divide in Covid cases/restrictions with various people and often hear comments like ‘Well there’s a higher risk where there’s higher levels of deprivation/poorer areas etc.’, ‘poorer people and ethnic minorities worst affected’- suggesting in basic terms that there’s more Covid ‘up north’ as it’s poorer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that London is the centre of finance/business etc. and yes, there are a lot of very wealthy Londoners. House prices are obviously extortionate but they’ve been inflated for a number of reasons.

But WHY is there this classic ‘grim up north’ perspective of anything north of the Home Counties really?

Having lived in the north, as well as in London, I can honestly say I found parts of London immensely ‘grim’ and deprived, there are millions of people working in low paid, precarious jobs. A huge amount of ethnic diversity. Most people can only dream of owning a house and end up spending an extortionate amount of rent on tiny, sub-standard accommodation.

I know there are various ‘northern’ cities that are often viewed as grim - but my experience even of the most commonly slated cities is that they all have lovely parts, often much closer to countryside and people are able to live a much better standard of living as wages are fairly similar (which they actually are in a lot of sectors and areas of the U.K. now!) and they can actually afford to buy a proper house.

I know for a fact that there isn’t as much of a London vs everywhere else salary divide now - and a lot of people still commute to the major cities as well.

Where does this snobbery come from? Is it as obvious as fact that the Royals are based down south etc etc?

I went to an infamously posh/snobby university and the teasing, snobbery and often insulting attitudes to anyone north of about Oxford was awful and I look back in amazement.

Thoughts? Where does it stem from and why is it still a thing?

As a born and bred Londoner, I've often wondered about this but from the opposite viewpoint. Why do many people think that Londoners are rich? For most people, there isn't much cash left over once the bills and mortgage/rent has been paid. The only snobby/aloof 'Londoners' I've met are often ones who weren't born in London and choose to live in the gentrified areas where the previous community were priced out. Just my personal experience.

@SuitedandBooted Some of the ignorance is so varied and bizarre. I've met 'posh' Londoners (mostly people from wealthy backgrounds who grew up in places like Oxfordshire) who've never even heard of the Welsh Valleys. They think Wales is Cardiff, Pembrokeshire, and Anglesey.

On the other side, I've met people from Wales who thought London was all Kensington, Chelsea, and Hampstead, and that every Londoner was rich. They clearly never watch the news (London's deprived communities blighted by gang crime).

People are weird. The ignorant prejudiced ones at least.

@AfolMummy

As a born and bred Londoner, I've often wondered about this but from the opposite viewpoint. Why do many people think that Londoners are rich? For most people, there isn't much cash left over once the bills and mortgage/rent has been paid. The only snobby/aloof 'Londoners' I've met are often ones who weren't born in London and choose to live in the gentrified areas where the previous community were priced out. Just my personal experience.

This.

@user1471448866
I've found the worse anti Liverpool sentimental comes from Mancunians. To be fair it works both ways. I know a guy from Liverpool who hates people from Manchester. I think it's just a football thing but I'm not sure? All this ridiculous prejudice, wherever it comes from, is so silly.

I’ve come out of lurking to post. I live in Bolton. Have many friends down south. There is a prejudice from some southern people but then all the visitors we get love it here. Granted we live on the edge and walk from our door through fields to numerous lovely country pubs.

We have a lot more disposable income that our southern friends and I think we have a better quality of life because of that. We get to go on numerous holidays a year, the children have lots of opportunities because we have the disposable income whilst being in greater Manchester. My husband could earn more in London but not enough for a comparable house and lifestyle.

Some areas are very deprived in the town though. Many of these are immigrant families where it is in the culture for one parent to stay home with 5 + kids and Dad is on a low income. Walking through these areas at night however I definitely feel safer than in some areas down south but that could be just because I’m used to it.

I can be very conscious of my accent and it’s common for me to mocked because of it, even if nicely.

Because of what Thatcher did to the north.

I've always lived up North. My first teaching job was in a school in a mining village where the mines had been closed in the 80s (I taught there in the early 00s). For 20+ years there hadn't been any jobs in the village. It was grim in that village. The pupils had no experience at all of their family or neighbours having decent jobs, a huge proportion of the village had been on benefits for years. The kids assumed that's what their future would look like. I believe in the last 15 years it's looking up for them, but it was very deprived and definitely grim.

I lived about 10 miles away in another town and it was like chaos and cheese. Most of my friends and relatives had professional jobs, people I would meet out and about at home had an air of respectability and hope for the future that was just missing from the kids I taught at that school.

Where I live now is still up North. I teach now in a school that spans a huge income range. Some very, very wealthy villages in one direction. Some pretty run down, deprived places in the other direction. It's a much nicer place to teach tbh, as the kids from deprived areas pick up some of the hope and confidence in the future from their classmates from slightly wealthier areas. And possibly the biggest difference is, there's a factory with lots of jobs for locals, in the town.

@annabel85

Because of what Thatcher did to the north.

Thatcher's policies (enthusiastically taken further then she ever did by Blair) affected the whole country. Differently and in different ways. Some good, some bad. If you mean mines, it used to be an industry in Kent too. And with housing, the Right To Buy undoubtedly hit the south, London particularly, harder than anywhere else.

There are nice bits and grim places in both the north and the south but there are some northern towns that just look different and are a bit depressing. My husband came from one of them and his parents were desperate for him to leave as they knew if he stayed his opportunities would be very limited.

First off, there has been a gradual increase in wealth the further south east you go, for last 2000 years. Proximity to continental Europe created opportunities for trade, hence entreports such as a place called 'Londinium' sprang up, and with it you got the merchant classes conducting their business. Until the 17th century, farming varied in nature throughout England, as it is obviously harder to make lots of money from a desolate moor in Yorkshire, than I nice flat nutrient rich floodplain in Cambridgeshire, so you had a slight difference in the type of agriculture (which made up ~90% of GDP in 1500. Also there has always been bigger populations in the south east. As the British government became professional, it was focused around the Kings residence, which was in London, read also, lawyers, merchants etc.
However the mineral resources of the industrially expanding north created huge fortunes in the North, thus you had some spreading of financial centres around the country, and Liverpool was nearly on par with London as a centre of commerce in the mid 19th century.
But, as de industrialisation began in the 20th century, this fell away, and so now the core tertiary industries have flooded back to London, as there presence is not needed as much in the northern powerhouse, including Glasgow, Yorkshire- Lancashire conurbation etc. As such we think its always been the case that Greater London has sucked in everything like a black hole, but really it's down to the fact that in 1950, the economy was roughly split 50/50 north to south, and is now more like 35/65.
Nevertheless there are many exceptions, for example the West half of Sheffield where I live is the second least deprived constituency in the UK, and contrary to popular belief, Steel is still produced here, it's just specialist, mechanized and employees a fraction of what it used to. This resulted in the structural unemployment you see in mining towns from Dundee to Sussex; much of the Northern industry became subject to requirement.
Also dont worry I'm not nuts, I'm doing a degree in economic history 😂

but my experience even of the most commonly slated cities is that they all have lovely parts, often much closer to countryside and people are able to live a much better standard of living as wages are fairly similar (which they actually are in a lot of sectors and areas of the U.K. now!) and they can actually afford to buy a proper house.

Spot on. We pay council tax to Barnsley MBC. Barnsley is seen as a poor Northern Town. It is true that it isn’t affluent, but 80% of BMBC is rural, and there are some really pretty villages. We border the Peak District, and the borough includes part of the Pennines. We live in reservoir country and have walked around quite a few. This is Langsett

I actually spent most of my life in the south and it’s friends I met/still live down there that have this sort of attitude even if it isn’t meant offensively

I grew up in South London, and moved to God’s own county (Yorkshire) in 1980. Depressingly, my family back in South London still think “it’s grim up North”.

The only downside for me is the weather. Being the rain shadow of the Pennines we get a lot of rain, and it is always several degrees cooler than London and the South East. We have had quite a nice summer, but haven’t enjoyed the heat that the southern part of the UK has.
These are some of the houses for sale within a 10 mile radius of Barnsley
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-97389767.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-71953794.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67475721.html

House prices make people think Northeners are poorer. I've met people who think houses cost £100k everywhere in Yorkshire.

Plus, an old fashioned view of factories, miners etc.

And many rich old money Northerners have very posh 'southern' accents - so people think they're not from the North. So there becomes a false idea that few northerners have money unless they are very new money.

I'm a northerner and love in London. Where I grew up there are fewer very rich people. There is however a nicer standard of living for those on lower incomes.

I can honestly say I found parts of London immensely ‘grim’ and deprived, there are millions of people working in low paid, precarious jobs. A huge amount of ethnic diversity.

I'm really hoping you didn't mean the ethnic diversity was an example of just how poor London is .

@MsAwesomeDragon chaos and cheese sounds like it's right up my street!

I think the weather is to blame for the grimness. It's colder, wetter and snowier up north. Ugh!

It goes back to the deindustrialisation of Britain which obviously hit Northern mining towns and shipbuilding areas such as Liverpool and the NE hardest. Some areas found it hard to recover.

Of course there are wealthy / less wealthy areas scattered all over the country. Tjis goes without saying. The North / South divide is not as marked as it once was.

But you did ask OP, so I’m going to be honest ..., London is unlike other cities in the UK because it is a world city, in the same way as Paris or NYC. It’s quite unique in its vibe. You can’t really compare London to Manchester or Birmingham or Liverpool. Life is tough for many people in London yes, and this is precisely why many are pushed out. However, if you are someone who can live reasonably well in the London area, you do notice that the rest of the country is different in the sense that it feels less vibrant / diverse and kind of depressed in comparison. That’s not to say that different areas aren’t pleasant in their own way because they obviously are, but it all just feels a bit more gloomy Nd boring everywhere else. Plus the SE is noticeably drier weather - more than people (particularly those in the NW) realise. The Lakes are interminable rain / drizzle - that kind of weather can have a real impact on your mental health. So yes, people could move “north” and get more space or whatever, but there are very good reasons why they don’t feel the need to.

The weather is definitely a factor although the north has been much drier and less snowier these last few years. Some areas of northern cities are very diverse however this does tend to be limited to certain areas so I get that London definitely has a different feel and feels much more of a world city (as it is) than other cities.

But wages (esp in the private sector) are also less outside London. Experienced chartered accountant jobs in the North West are typically £40k or so, which would be at least double in London.
@user1497207191 maybe double the wages but triple the cost of living. I know where I'd rather be.

Large towns (those dark satanic mills) were built 'overnight' with little thought to beauty or the comfort of the new inhabitants. Those new inhabitants included many unemployed agricultural workers from the rural south. Ironically they had been made unemployed by the mechanisation of the farms.

This is not true. People were not made unemployed by farm mechanisation, not at the time of the industrial revolution. What happened was that they were driven off the common land by the rich, who stole it and declared it theirs.

I went to an infamously posh/snobby university and the teasing, snobbery and often insulting attitudes to anyone north of about Oxford was awful and I look back in amazement.*

Which proves that's going to university does not always mean one is intelligent, broad-minded or even rational.

"I've met people from Wales who thought London was all Kensington, Chelsea, and Hampstead, and that every Londoner was rich. "

If you travel to London by coach from south Wales you come in through these areas so that's what you see as a visitor.
Also, if you look at wages, Londoners ARE high earners it's just that the cost of living is also higher.

@DdraigGoch

But wages (esp in the private sector) are also less outside London. Experienced chartered accountant jobs in the North West are typically £40k or so, which would be at least double in London. *@user1497207191* maybe double the wages but triple the cost of living. I know where I'd rather be.

This. You're a lot more likely to be able to buy a nice house in a nice area and live well with a sensible commute on £40k in the north west than £80k in London.

Everyone is giving personal stories and of course there are wealthy and poor people in north and south.

But it is true on a broader soci-economic basis. London basically generates the big wealth to pay for the rest of the country. But it would do whether it was in the Midlands or on the borders of scotland.

My bugbear is the phrase "it's grim oop North".
No one says 'up' as 'oop'. I'm in Lancashire so NW and don't think any areas further North say 'oop' either. It was obviously coined by someone with no idea of the North

@lotusbell

My bugbear is the phrase "it's grim oop North". No one says 'up' as 'oop'. I'm in Lancashire so NW and don't think any areas further North say 'oop' either. It was obviously coined by someone with no idea of the North

Actually it was coined by JB Priestly A Yorkshire man !

Ooops Priestley