To think the Government don't understand where "the north" actually is?

[AdamRyan]

Government have scrapped the Leeds extension of HS2, so it now goes to Manchester. There will be faster trains to Sheffield as well. This apparently is to enable levelling up of "The North"
www.bbc.co.uk/news

AIBU to think Manchester and Sheffield are barely The North in an English context, let alone when you add in Scotland? What exactly does this do for the most deprived communities in the North East and the Lakes?

I'm so annoyed, the North of the UK just constantly gets left behind :(

Well YANBU to find the ignoring of other areas a problem.
But I think generally speaking Manchester is widely considered to be in the North. The problem isn’t that Manchester is considered to be in the North, but that it’s almost seen as the entire North - in the sense that politicians seem to think “well this benefits Manchester, so it benefits The North so we’ve really done our bit there”

YANBU - but this is not just politics - it’s evident enough right here across these forums.

I’m 3 times as far north from Manchester than Manchester is from London. In the last few weeks I’ve been told it’s IMPOSSIBLE it’s getting dark before 4pm.

Two years ago DH was told by his (Government) employer that his job was moving to the North of England.
To Lincolnshire... barely 90mins from London!

I find this question of where the North begins fascinating (I'm not originally from the UK)
OP where would you say it begins? Is Leeds the North?

YANBU to be annoyed, it's really shocking how the government so completely ignore a whole part of the country

Of course Manchester is the North of England. These two things are not connected at all.

The North = Inverness, Aberdeen etc.
The North of England is totally different.

Of course Manchester is in the North of England.

Manchester is the North West

Sheffield is the North Of England.

No doubting that their is a lot still above them but that doesn’t mean they aren’t in the North and both are key hubs that need the links before we can get things better further North

@dreamingbohemian

I find this question of where the North begins fascinating (I'm not originally from the UK) OP where would you say it begins? Is Leeds the North?

YANBU to be annoyed, it's really shocking how the government so completely ignore a whole part of the country

I’d say The North begins at the Highlands.

Otherwise you are ignoring a whole country, not just part of a country.

Officially, the North of England is made up of: Cheshire, Cumbria, County Durham, East Riding of Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and West Yorkshire, plus the unitary authority areas of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.

I don’t really know what’s ‘North’ either. But I’m not running the country.

Is Derbyshire North?

I'm from Sheffield and I get what you mean, to me Sheffield is only really where the north begins, its not the "deep north". Feel.sorry for Newcastle and co, they always seem to be forgotten.

The north is the line between the Severn Estuary and The Wash. Leicester, Lincoln, Birmingham and Cardiff are all north. Northampton, Peterborough and Norwich are all south.

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon
To me Derbyshire is the Midlands

@AlphabetAerobics

YANBU - but this is not just politics - it’s evident enough right here across these forums.

I’m 3 times as far north from Manchester than Manchester is from London. In the last few weeks I’ve been told it’s IMPOSSIBLE it’s getting dark before 4pm.

@AlphabetAerobics the most ridiculous thing I’ve read on here is a poster saying in all seriousness that Booths isn’t posh because it’s only in the north of England and it’s only there for tourists to visit when they’re visiting the Lake District 🙄.

I think a lot of people don't understand what 'the north' actually means, not just politicians.

Look at some of the posters on here, who've clearly never left rural Oxfordshire or Surrey in their lives, who bang on about being able to 'buy a much cheaper house up north' like:
a) Scotland doesn't exist; and
b) 'the north' is one place and all house prices are the same there.

Compare the prices of three-bedroom houses in Didsbury vs Dewsbury vs Dalkeith and you'll see massive differences.

I assumed the government means the north of England (because Scotland has Nicola Sturgeon sorting everything) and so it starts where the Midlands stop and, yes, that means Manchester us in the north.
As someone who moved from the south to the Midlands, I have noticed a phenomenon where people view the north as anywhere a bit further north than where they live. The whole "anywhere north of Watford" if you're a Londoner. Now I'm in the Midlands then it starts at Sheffield. I'm guessing if I moved to Manchester it would change again.

I'm guessing if I moved to Manchester it would change again.

It wouldn't. Mancunians definitely consider themselves northern.

As a Londoner I’m convinced that the North begins around Luton. Derbyshire and Notts. must be the North because of their predisposition for putting gravy on their chips. I’m pretty sure that’s how this government are working out where the North is too, due to their similar cluelessness. That’s why it might be good to have a couple of people in the Cabinet not from London or the Home Counties, I guess. But then there’s lots of things that I wish this Cabinet had that it doesn’t.... like a Prime Minister who isn’t a lying gimp or a chancellor who hasn’t got better hair than ideas.

I've just had a quick a-z route check on my post code to Manchester . We live another 137 miles ' north ' of it . I don't really feel like I'm still in the North if we go to Manchester but I guess it's all relative to where you live .
We live approx 30-35 miles to the border of Scotland , so I can definitely call myself a northerner.

@BethAfra
That's not true. Northerners know they are northern. Its only southerners who really struggle with the boundary.

wikipedia suggests this:

"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."

To those of us close to Newcastle, Manchester is hours away and not North. Leeds 'feels' Northern when you visit so I think of it as the lowest North there is. Liverpool, definitely not North.

There is no intention of 'levelling up' just a wider area for low paid jobs to support companies based in London.

As a Scot, I understood that ‘the North West’ didn’t mean the highlands, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that I understood it didn’t mean Cumbria either - seems to mean greater Manchester.

@Disfordarkchocolate

Of course Manchester and liverpool are northern. Are you from the countryside? Those two cities are much bigger and livelier than leeds so you might just have felt they dont feel northern because they are much more metropolitan and "globalised" than Leeds, which still.feels like a market town that got big.