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?

When my mother lived in County Durham Yorkshire was regarded as The South

@pussycatinboots

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.

Blimey, the Midlands extend further than I thought...

Hello @Caplin

Lots of good places to eat in Hexham - Bouchon (nice French), The Beaumont, Rising Sun, The Tans, Wentworth Cafe (best chips, good vegan breakfast), Small World Cafe and Little Mexico.

If you get up early and join the queue at The Grateful Bread you will be rewarded with amazing bread and cinnamon buns.

The cinema is open but I think you need to book in advance (Forum Cinema), my husband says the social distancing works well.

Swimming pool is open (Wentworth Leisure Centre), I see people queuing to get in but I don't know if you have to book.

Cogito books is well worth a browse as is Matthias Winter.

A wander around Corbridge is always lovely and if your North of Hexham there are some lovely walks.

If you want to see Hardian's Wall a visit to The Sill and/or The Roman Army Museum are worth the trip.

I think Sheffield would describe itself as part of the North.

But Chesterfield? Mansfield? Lincoln?

Are you equally annoyed by northerners who say "the South"?

@dorispiffle My Lambeth born DH agrees! I am from Northamptonshire so "my" North starts at Derby .

Well it is how many people in the south east view the world. The more they do it and make decisions based on it, the more they will face intransigence from those regions, just as is happening now. It just seems that they are incapable of learning and the massive unfairness of how people on England are treated regionally works to their advantage.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

The Miidlands being a long way south

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

But by that logic, Wales doesn't have a North or South at all, it's all just West. Where do you live in Wales? In the West , Cardiff.

And Scotland has no South.
You're from Scotland, which part?
Up North, Lockerbie

But by that logic, Wales doesn't have a North or South at all, it's all just West.
Where do you live in Wales?
In the West , Cardiff.

It's two different things, though. Wales (along with Devon and Cornwall) is effectively all just the lower west of GB, but within Wales, you would distinguish between north and south. The more you home in on a nation/region/area, the more precise you get.

My point was that, although I live in the English Midlands - which is indeed a sensibly-assigned description - if I look at the mainland of my own whole country, there's (currently) no invisible glass force-field which will prevent me from continuing when I get near Coldstream, and for another 400+ miles.

Using the Wales example, people almost always specify North or South Wales; but when referring to England, we just say 'the Midlands' and 'the North' and brush off the 'actual' northern third as 'just Scotland'.

It would be like saying that somebody who's 5' in height is very short, 5'6 is medium and 6'0 is very tall; then, when somebody who's 6'9 asks how you'd describe them in that case, just saying "Oh, you're a giant - you don't count in the main people statistics".

I see the north as starting beyond Nottingham

but when referring to England, we just say 'the Midlands' and 'the North' and brush off the 'actual' northern third as 'just Scotland'.
I don't get you. If we're referring to England, your saying people refer to Northern England as Scotland?? Who does that?? Or we refer to every country bar Scotland in terms of compass points? So when referring to Scotland no one specifies where?

It just about me generally when the options are

1. England had a North and South. The bit where they meet is just some shitty little towns no one knows about.
2. England has a Midlands,it's Manchester area because Scotland is further North.

@GoldfishParade

I see the north as starting beyond Nottingham

Agreed. Notts in Midlands but Chester is North, by latitude it's a thin line. In fact I say N starts at 53.1°N

Can I just point out that Andy Burnham refers to The North.

I don't get you. If we're referring to England, your saying people refer to Northern England as Scotland?? Who does that??

No, the opposite! People refer to northern England as 'The North', even though it's only halfway up the country as a whole.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I don't get you. If we're referring to England, your saying people refer to Northern England as Scotland?? Who does that??

No, the opposite! People refer to northern England as 'The North', even though it's only halfway up the country as a whole.

But the majority of people refering to England as The North are talking about England. Just like Stuggart is Northern Europe but not Northern Germany.

Anyone saying Northern Britain and meaning say Chester, fair enough, i support their flailing with a bitch strap 👍

Apparently mountain walks are popular? And winter is coming.

I say down south meaning England as I live in Scotland.

That's fine that you don't like the north of England lumped together. The same goes for the south. I don't like being thought of a Londoner just because I live in the south. I lived in Leeds for a number of years and my then friends would always talk about "the south" and "southerners". It turned out they meant anyone south of Sheffield. When pressed further they seem to think that anyone they classed as southern was a Londoner. They really were the most ignorant, ridiculous group of people. They spent so much time bad mouthing southerners and when I asked why, a guy who always mimicked me using a cockney accent and doing rhyming slang at me, said he hated southerners because he had once been asked if he was from Lancashire which was the worst insult he'd ever heard. In the next breath he was calling me a "cockney sparrow" despite the fact I came from Bedfordshire and have never lived I London, let alone East London.

I would also add that this group of people took great pleasure in being grouped as a Northerner...as long as they weren't linked to Lancashire!

Yes. It should be 'Oop North'!

It's amusing seeing that huge road sign in London worded 'The North'. What - Helsinki? There's something so simple and domestic, yet so expansive about it. Suddenly your mind opens and you're dreaming of faraway places, the adventure, the romance of the road...the lure and the promise of The North is lovely to me.

Right now I'm somewhat irked by Lancashire being considered as one entity... that quiet centre point has little in common with the (post?) industrial urban areas.

And Scotland has no South.

Scotland has the northern isles, the western isles, the north east, the central belt, the highlands (north of the central belt) and the southern uplands or the borders (south of the central belt).

This sort of divide, inferiority/superiority is everywhere.
Similar in Ireland. it's Dublin v the rest of the country. At the moment the rest of the country is blaming Dublin on the spike of cases (the population of Dublin is far larger than anywhere else in the republic, no where else comes close)
Comment sections on covid artocles the last few months show the inferiority/superiority complex is still an issue. The dubs (Dublin people) look down on the rest of the country, 'culchies' or 'boggers' they call them. They (still) go on as if life beyond the pale (outside Dublin territory) is still stuck in the last century. 'Country people' call dubs 'jackeens' and according to them all badness begins and ends in Dublin. Apparently everyone there is scumbag, and poverty and crime only occurs there.
I'm originally from Dublin but live in 'the country'. So I'm not on either side of the fence. And frankly I cringe seeing these discussions between grown adults. I think this is a worldwide issue with city folk and country people and with perceived nice areas and not so areas. It's pathetic really. You don't fit into a stereotypical box because you're from a particular area or you part of the country.
Plenty of rough places in the south, indeed plenty in London, plenty of nice places in the north.

YANBU, but I don't like the South being lumped together either, particularly when it just refers to London. I live on the south coast so everyone's up north to me anyway!

I'm from Devon and spent a few years living in the NE and the NW with my oh who is from the NW. I got called a "soft southern fairy" a fair few times, was mocked for my westcountry accent being "posh"???!!! and also had people talking to me with a mock cockney accent. We now live back in the westcountry and I can't think of a single occasion where my oh has been teased or insulted for having a northern accent. So you'll forgive me if I'm not too worried about offending anyone by referring to the North as the North.

A friend said she was going "up Brighton way" which as I'm from Leeds blew my mind !