to wish people would stop saying 'The North'

[Lludmilla]

...like it's all one great big homogenous lump of land.

This irritates me at the best of times, but the recent Covid scapegoating has made it worse. Newsflash: Covid rates actually VARY in what people are referring to as 'The North'. Just like poverty rates, crime rates, unemployment rates, everything really. Who'd have thought it?

I've spent my life in various places, mainly around the north-west and the east Midlands, and I don't have all the southern counties lumped together in my mind as one big mass called 'The South'.

Am I alone in feeling that some (note I said SOME) of those who use the term 'The North' are exhibiting unconscious ignorance/bias?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide_(England)

Writer and journalist Stuart Maconie argues that "there is no south of England... There's a bottom half of England... but there isn't a south in the same way that there's a north".He goes on to state that "there's no conception of the south comparable to the north. Good or bad, 'the north' means something to all English people wherever they hail from... [to southerns] it means desolation, arctic temperatures, mushy peas, a cultural wasteland with limited shopping opportunities and populated by aggressive trolls. To northerners it means home, truth, beauty, valour, romance, warm and characterful people, real beer and decent chip shops. And in this we are undoubtedly biased, of course". This suggests that all people in England have biased views regarding the North-South divide. Maconie says regarding on where the North starts that "Crewe is surely the gateway to the North", suggesting that Crewe is the most southern part of the north of England.

I live in 'The North' and don't take offence when people call it that

I'm guilt of referring to anywhere South of Birmingham as 'down South'

Obviously it is sometimes necessary to be more specific about what area you are talking about but if you are referring to most of the North of England then calling it 'The North' is not divisive, it's just a description

Ha Ha - when you live in the Channel Islands, pretty much all of the UK is 'north'!

Note to Boris - you should have closed the UK's borders (like we did) and then implemented a rigorous border testing regime on reopening (you know, like we did) and got your test and trace working (well, as well as ours is). Also, you don't have to have actual symptoms to be tested here - which is just as well, as that does rather seem like shutting the door after the horse has bolted. All adds up to no confirmed community transmission for several months. If we can do it, surely all the UK has to do is scale it up? Yes, it costs money, but it's cheaper than buggering your local economy to kingdom come with lockdowns. And normal life, more or less, has carried one here.

The nearest village to the centre of the UK is said to be Dunsop Bridge- in Lancashire. Tolkien based Middle Earth on that area (it’s stunning- I walk those fells often).

So that means Lancashire is actually in the midlands .

@EhUp
Surely that should be Daaaahn Saaaaaf?

@Imissmoominmama

The nearest village to the centre of the UK is said to be Dunsop Bridge- in Lancashire. Tolkien based Middle Earth on that area (it’s stunning- I walk those fells often).

So that means Lancashire is actually in the midlands .

Whilst we'd be happy to have them, it refers to the Middle d England not the lake mass, which o think is Leicester

@pussycatinboots absolutely, it needs to be said in a cheesy Essex accent

@MoonDelay

It's a bit 'Game of Thrones' isn't it 😄

I was going to say that!

I live in Newcastle, and always say I'm a northerner, but as soon as I speak to someone from Scotland they tut at me and say I'm a soft southerner

I agree. I'm in the West Midlands region and still annoyed that a single one of the 'counties' here presumes to apply the name just to itself - and if you look at a map of the UK, we're a very long way south. I think it's even crazier when 'Scotland' is considered as a single region (usually by English people). Whatever it is, even when something is described as 'UK-wide', you'll find that your 'regional' hub - whether for holidays start points, deliveries, meeting places or whatever - will be somewhere in Glasgow or Edinburgh, so you 'simply' need to arrange the 'local' leg of your journey from your home in Thurso to get to your 'convenient regional' pick-up point And that's if you live in the mainland, which a great many people don't.

It's all relative, though. I recall reading of somebody saying they were 'going up north' on holiday - they were from Penzance and their destination was Bournemouth!

YABU, it is Dahn south and up north.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll not really...

I don't mind when people call it The North. It's simply a statement of fact.
I do mind when people refer to Northerners as though we're one homogenous mass, or somehow less than people from the South/London. Examples include recent behaviour around the coronavirus situation, Brexit and/or political voting, the price of houses in the north.

I live in Scotland and most people I know refer sketchily to "down South.." It usually means England. Reminds me of Voldemort.😆
Ime Wales usually gets its own mention.

Yes, I'm in East Central Scotland and North to me is where the PIL's live, an hour north of Inverness.
Tbf, my geography of England is terrible, so Northern England to me is like Cumbria, Yorkshire? I would say South would be Cambridge downwards?

When I travelled to Wick you get a sense of
just how big Scotland is. It kind of blew my mind a bit.

Just looked online and it's 4 hours 15 mins on the train from Inverness!

@junojigglewick

I'm North of Dundee but am definitely not the highlands, I still think I'm southern Scotland. It's all relative.

@PickAChew

But. But... The A1 goes to The North.

Yes! I too am thinking of the A1(M) signs. I live near a junction (in the south) so see THE NORTH every day.

Northerner here. You don't sound tough enough to be northern if your offended by people saying 'the north' 🤣
Also
I see the south as everywhere down from York
That's probably a stretch actually.
Durham is probably the most southern point of the north 🤣🤣

@dorispiffle

North starts at the Watford Gap. Gavel.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally and ironically incorrect, but the Watford Gap is not in Watford...

It cuts both ways doesn't it - there's as much lumping together of the North as there is the South, not to mention the lazy assumption the whole of the (hugely varied) South East is affluent, expensive and London-oriented. It's all unhelpful and based on silly cliches and entrenched, inherited prejudices.

I'm a midlander and don't identify as either a southerner or northerner, though I have it on good authority that those from London and below consider anything North of the Watford Gap services to be the North.

I think most UK folk harbour some light hearted disdain for those who live elsewhere in the UK, regardless of where elsewhere is.

I've spent my life in various places, mainly around the north-west

Sounds like you have got Manchester, Liverpool and many other distinct towns and areas with unique identities, accents and histories lumped together as one big land mass called "The north-west", which I find offensive. Please stop doing that :-P

I'm always surprised at how far north Sheffield is. To my (Lancs/Cumbria) mindset it's somewhere about level with Birmingham, not a hop skip and peatbog away from Manchester.

I thought the South was within the delivery service for Harrods.

I think it's fine but then I'm used to two very distinct geographical areas of the country so to me 'The North' and 'The South' makes perfect sense.

My late father, then living in Croydon, was once offered two jobs. One was in Hamburg, the other somewhere up near Aberdeen.

He took the job in Hamburg, as it was nearer. I remember being astonished that somewhere in a foreign country could be nearer than somewhere in the UK.

Although, with hindsight, he may have been winding me up. He was a pisstaking bugger.