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?

Anywhere above the m4 is north,below m4 south according to dh,he is from the deep south I'm from the far north past hadriens wall

@Caplin

controversial POV alert

Is Manchester really the north? Or is it north midlands?

I live in Edinburgh and Manchester doesn’t feel very north. Leeds yes, Manchester, not really. I have to drive 5 flipping hours to get to Manchester.

Manchester is in the North West. So, by definition it's in the North. But North England, rather than North UK.

@BlusteryShowers

Waving at *@caplin* from Hadrian's Wall

Waving back!!! See you next week 😁😁😁

@ErrolTheDragon maybe I am, I rarely venture south of Leeds nowadays! And that feels distinctly Mediterranean 😁

In return will all whippet owning, real ale drinking, Tory voting Brexiteers stop complaining about "Down South"?
It's enough to want me to rebuild hadrian's wall and expand the channel tunnel!
Mostly light hearted!

Hadrian's wall didn't really work back in the day so rebuilding it now is probably futile. It would create a lot of jobs now though.

My favourite moment was in Canada -- first in British Columbia and Alberta where everyone referred to Toronto and Ottawa (the capital) as "back East," then arriving in Toronto to learn they called themselves "Central Canada." Wars start over less

Birmingham person here just outraged about @Imissmoominmama saying JRR Tolkien based lord of the rings was about lancashire! Perrotts Folly in Edgbaston was the inspiration for the two towers of gondor, sarehole mill was the shire and Birmingham university tower was the inspiration for orthanc tower (sarumans tower)

OK, to those who've pointed out my own post was rather general in terms of regions... it's a fair cop, I'll come quietly.

I think it's just started to grind my gears since I've starting seeing references to 'The North' by people (both on and off MN) who have then gone on to express cliched and prejudiced views of whatever they consider 'The North' to be. Obviously I'm not accusing everyone who uses the term 'The North' of doing this, but a select few certainly do, especially in the context of Covid prejudice.

Maybe north is a state of mind 😝
@Caplin north isn't just a state of mind. North is a way of life. removes tongue from cheek

And, of course, I realise that we northerners are just as guilty of 'darn Sarf, cor blimey me old china, I'll have a pint of jellied eels' tropes. I try not to do that unless I'm trying to annoy someone at the time.

@showmethegin

Birmingham person here just outraged about *@Imissmoominmama* saying JRR Tolkien based lord of the rings was about lancashire! Perrotts Folly in Edgbaston was the inspiration for the two towers of gondor, sarehole mill was the shire and Birmingham university tower was the inspiration for orthanc tower (sarumans tower)

I think it was a bit of both TBF. By the b'ham uni tower, do you mean Old Joe? Red brick and wizardry don't quite compute.

@Caplin

I remember going to Thurso once, next stop John o’Groats. Edinburgh to Inverness was 4 hours, which felt proper north. Thurso was another 4 hours north of that which blew my mind. Never mind the ferry from there to Orkney!

I had the same experience once on a holiday to Orkney where we travelled by road and ferry. We're in Leics and we had to break the journey overnight in Inverness, by which time I was already gobsmacked to be reminded how much more of Scotland there is above Edinburgh/Glasgow level! The next day's travelling seemed to go on for ever as well. It sounds brainless but I'd genuinely never stopped to think about the sheer size of Scotland before!

I'm a northerner in the south

All my family and friends (in the north) call anywhere past Birmingham the south.

Everyone here (in the south west) calls anything above London the north

And, even though I'm a northerner, I am now classed as a 'softy southerner' by all those in the north despite being a tough as nails salt of the earth northerner up until the day before I moved south. 🙄

Doesn't bother me as much as people saying they are going down to London for the day when clearly it's up (from here)

The Miidlands being a long way south

I was talking in whole-of-GB terms, though - not just England.

When I'm PM I'm drawing a straight line
No where I'm England will be more North than anywhere on Scotland. It's confusing 😂. You're gonna be Scottish

Like with the classic 'gotcha' pub quiz question - "To which country does the northernmost point of the island of Ireland belong?" People assume you're looking for the answer "The United Kingdom", but they reckon not on Donegal!

Actually, the diagonal-ish line separating England from Scotland is even starker in reality than it looks on maps, as the country is a lot more 'tilted', with the north-west being much further west than you might assume, so the border is actually even more towards the vertical than at first appearances.

I always find it weird to think that Edinburgh and Cardiff are on virtually the same line of longitude - thus Edinburgh is further west than Bristol.

@Hellothere19999

I think we refer to “the south”/ “southerners” just as much but it is relative. I remember when visiting London for uni (I’m from Manchester) a girl said she was northern like me.... she was from Peterborough. Lol. I mean it is north of London I guess 🤔

I lived on the south coast for a few years (Southampton / Portsmouth area) and once heard a colleague there refer to Peterborough as 'up north'. I exploded with laughter and told him it wasn't, because to me it's the last stop before London on the East Coast main line which, if you've come down from Scotland or even Yorkshire, makes it south in my book.

He protested in an affronted tone, 'But it's level with Birmingham!'

I'm in England but further north than parts of Scotland. Get your head round that southerners

Jeez try Ireland. The next village is Them over There, and as for our North.
Its human nature. Other the others.

Ladycatstark if the Scottish are the wildlings then what are us English (Northumbrians) who live north of the wall ? The Night's Watch ?

As a Mancunian who lived in Newcastle, I was routinely confused when people would ask me what the tap water and chippies were like down south.

To be honest, Manchester and Sheffield are probably as south of 'the North' as you can get. I know Cheshire is considered northern, but to me, it always 'felt' part of the Midlands!

I've lived all over, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, London, midlands, scottish Borders. Most of my adult life I lived in England. It's true that those who I met who lived south of London considered anything north of London as "the north". Scotland didn't even enter into the equation! And lots of news reported always referred to England rather than Scotland but you'd have to figure that out! Funny for such a small country.

I had the same experience once on a holiday to Orkney where we travelled by road and ferry. We're in Leics and we had to break the journey overnight in Inverness, by which time I was already gobsmacked to be reminded how much more of Scotland there is above Edinburgh/Glasgow level! grin The next day's travelling seemed to go on for ever as well. It sounds brainless but I'd genuinely never stopped to think about the sheer size of Scotland before!

Firstly, it's only 2h30m from Inverness to Thurso so by the time you stop in the Black Isle to watch some dolphins, have lunch at The Storehouse of Foulis, sit on the beach to have an icecream from Capaldis in Brora, and go to Timespan in Helmsdale it's just a quick hop to Thurso for fish and chips on the evening board while admiring the Old Man and St John's Head glowing in the setting sun.

Secondly, I once drove with a southerner from Oxford to Edinburgh. We got to Manchester and he said 'oh good, we're almost there' and was rather put out to discover we were only half way!

@NerrSnerr are you from Hull?

Looking at a map I'd say the north of England should start around Leeds. I don't think Manchester and Liverpool are that far north and should be the midlands.

The north to me is probably Leicester upwards though many say Watford Gap is where the north starts which is south of where I live.