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 :(

@user0176

It's weird how the Midlands hasnt been more sexed up. Manchester got a massive clean up, Liverpool had a huge makeover, Sheffield got glammed up. Leeds I think they could really do more with. But the Midlands is right there basically on the doorstep to all important London but just hasnt been properly rebranded. I know they have done a lot of work on Birmingham but still nobody wants to go there in the same way they do the northern cities. And what's going on with Nottingham? It's really lagging. Other than that I cant think of any other Midlands cities that are really very evocative. The Midlands is definitely the culturally forgotten part of the UK in terms of sex appeal.

Because the Midlands doesn't feel sorry for itself, it doesn't make a song and dance about being forgotten etc so there's less political incentive to demonstrate money being spent in that area. I think at least!

I have to disagree about Leeds. I have to go there for work sometimes and I will try anything to get out of it.

Leeds and Manchester are v much the north. Culturally as well as geographically.

"Sheffield got glammed up"

It really hasn't. A few areas of the city centre have been improved, meanwhile others are still semi derelict and declining. If you were bring charitable you could call it a work in progress.

I agree to a point. I live in the south west (actual south west ie Devon/ Cornwall not south west of the Midlands - a bug bare of mine!) Here if there are strong winds and a high tide then all trains stop at Exeter. That's a huge area cut off from the rail network at least a few times a year. Nothing has even been suggested by the gov to improve this and yet those "in the North" have billions invested in order to make an already usable service half an hour or so faster. I can understand your frustrations if you are still miles from the biggest cities in the North.

@User135644

What's conflating is the 'east-west' in terms of the northern boundaries.

Nottingham for example would generally be regarded as the Midlands but it's far north of Birmingham. Are Staffordshire/Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire North or Midlands?

A place like Skegness (right on the east coast) doesn't seem like a northern town, but it's on line with Cheshire which is very much in the north.

It’s not difficult.

The Midlands is not just the West Midlands. Nottingham and Derby are in the East Midlands.

Skegvegas is 100% culturally northern.

I'm from much further north (yet still in England) than Manchester and can definitely agree that Manchester is in the north of England. But as PP have said, it's often treated as though it's the whole of the north. Which is ridiculous.

@JollyJoon and @QuestionableMouse, my DB lives in Jaywick. It is, without a doubt, the grimmest place I have ever visited. Not surprisingly, it also has an incredibly high rate of crime and addiction. A lot of the houses are leased to the council, who use them as temporary accommodation for homeless people. It doesn't even have a supermarket and it's 3-4 miles on the bus into Clacton, where there's a small Morrisons.

In the bit where DB lives, all the houses were built as holiday homes, and if anything happens to them, eg they burn down, they can't be rebuilt.

So having now skimmed through the report, it looks as if the North East will see few improvements, but the East Midlands will gain (mostly by uncancelling projects cancelled by Grayling).

@Porcupineintherough

Does anybody have an idea of how the population of England breaks down between the regions?

Here you go @Porcupineintherough

www.statista.com/statistics/294729/uk-population-by-region/

London and the SE alone account for over 18m, add in the SW and over a third of the entire UK population live in the south.

No wonder the roads are so fucking busy!

@BarstewardofNorthstead You beat me to it

@LakieLady I'd never heard of Jaywick before, I've just looked it up on Rightmove, I'm surprised how expensive the houses still seem to be considering the area.

@Bingbong21

Manchester is the North of England

No. Manchester is in the North of England, but it is only a small part of it. The government is boasting about investing in the North but most of the other cities are being left behind.

@1u1a

Of course Manchester is considered to be in the North of England . Yes there are places more northerly in England, but so what? I would say, ‘the North’ starts at the level of South Cheshire.

People in Manchester definitely identify as being “Northerners” anyway.

As for Scotland, that’s another country so irrelevant.

If the Tories insist on us being "one nation" then Scotland can't be considered irrelevant (or a different country, by that definition). If they want to no longer have to consider us, then they need to support independence.

But the attitude of "Scotland is irrelevant" is widespread so it's not surprising to encounter it here.

I'd be quite happy for us to be independent and no longer "relevant" to Westminster's whims. But while we're still part of the UK, we need to be given the same consideration and respect as other parts of the UK.

@HarrietsChariot

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.

cardiff is not the north of anything. Cardiff is on the south coast of Wales.

@Boood

I think it’s worth mentioning, for anyone in Leeds feeling aggrieved, that I don’t know anyone in Manchester who sees any benefit in HS2. We’re going to have years of noise and disruption while it’s being built, for the very dubious return of shaving about 20 minutes off the journey to London, which none of us need to make any more because business travel is pretty much a thing of the past. It will benefit people who decide to work in London and live up here, keeps their London salaries and fucking up our housing market with the additional buying power they’ve built up over the years. I really don’t think you are losing out by not having that. We are all losing out by not getting better lines between Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, though. We desperately need them.

I don't know what you've been reading but Manchester will shave 54 minutes from its London time, and 46 minutes from its Birmingham time. Far from the 20 minutes you've just made up. It also relieves the congested route through Stockport.

I know that there are some Mumsnetters who live in France, do any of you know anyone who whinges "I don't see any benefit from LGV Sud-Est, it just shaves a few minutes from the journey to Paris..."?

By the way, I've enjoyed using high speed rail to travel to Berlin and Marseille to/from London (changing in Paris or Brussels). I just wish that the journey from my home to London was high speed as well. In six years time I'll be able to get from Crewe to London in an hour. Hopefully electrification will speed up the journey from home to Crewe too. It's about time that the UK joined the modern world.

This government barely understands the location of anything that isn't London and the posh bits of the Cotswolds and the West Country, never mind anywhere else. In terms of where the "North" begins, though, isn't it traditionally around Watford Gap motorway Services for most Southerners?!

Or there's the option that it's anywhere that pies are eaten as a meal (and I mean proper pies, not a small circular casserole with a bit of pastry flung on the top); it's "tea", not "dinner" or "supper"; and obviously everybody keeps pigs, chickens, and whippets in their backyards....(not that I ever had those stereotypes thrown at me as a student in the East Midlands. Much. And of course I never, ever, played up to the stereotype just for fun....) Oh, and if it's Newcastle, it's where the temperatures are Arctic but the way people dress on a Friday and Saturday "doon the toon", you'd think it was Barbados, as a comedian recently put it...

Having grown up in the North (of England - Newcastle, to be specific), and lived in the Midlands, the North West (close to but not in Manchester and Liverpool), and the Deep South (Hampshire; Devon; Somerset) for a bit, I'd say anything north of the Humber is north-ish, but not the proper north (there's some debate about Manchester and Liverpool though I'd be inclined to put them in the north, but specify the north west, not the north east, Cumbria is really out on a limb).

And anything north of Hadrian's Wall and still on the mainland British Isles is Scotland - currently tethered to a London-based government that doesn't care at best and is malicious and malevolent at worst...

As for the whole "Northern Tory" movement, with MPs representing a party that traditionally despises the north, after today's announcement, I'm trying, I'm really, really trying, not to screech, "I told you so" at the top of my voice. So for now, I've added the phrase to my list of oxymorons along with "military intelligence" and "friendly fire"....

brilliantmaps.com/england-north-south/

[quote user0176]@LakieLady I'd never heard of Jaywick before, I've just looked it up on Rightmove, I'm surprised how expensive the houses still seem to be considering the area.[/quote]
Funnily enough, I looked it up on Rightmove just after I posted that and was surprised at how expensive they were!

The houses on Rightmove aren't representative, tbh. My DBro lives on an estate called Brooklands, where all the streets are named after old car manufacturers. Few of the houses are 2-storey, and the ones in the streets around where he lives don't have foundations, they're built entirely above ground, like old-style prefabs. If you streetview roads like Humber, Triumph, and Alvis Avenues, you'll get a more accurate impression.

DB's house was empty when he bought and he was living with our parents in Milton Keynes at the time. When he moved in, he found he had no water in the house, even after he located the stopcock and turned it on.

He called someone from the water company out, who spent all of 5 minutes establishing that some thieving fucker had got under the house and removed all the copper piping. Apparently, this had been happening regularly to unoccupied houses all round where he lives.

We grew up somewhere pretty rough, and wheels being nicked off cars was a pretty regular thing, but even he was shocked by having the water pipes nicked.

Here's the thing.

In England, travelling north to south (or south to north) is manageable.

Travelling between the cities of northern England is slow, crowded and unreliable.

The government is completely tone deaf about this. I work in one of these northern cities, with a lot of links to another. It really is less hassle, and not much more time, for me to get into London than to travel cross-country.

@Suspiciousmind20

At least ‘The North’ gets mentioned. The Midlands never does. Southerners say it’s north. Northerners say it’s south. And don’t get me started on Wales...

Well here in Wales we have our own North-South divide (complete with the forgotten bit in the middle). All the money flows into Cardiff and the rest of us just make do.

@Charliealphatangorara

I agree to a point. I live in the south west (actual south west ie Devon/ Cornwall not south west of the Midlands - a bug bare of mine!) Here if there are strong winds and a high tide then all trains stop at Exeter. That's a huge area cut off from the rail network at least a few times a year. Nothing has even been suggested by the gov to improve this and yet those "in the North" have billions invested in order to make an already usable service half an hour or so faster. I can understand your frustrations if you are still miles from the biggest cities in the North.

Agree @Charliealphatangorara Getting from Bournemouth to Newquay for example can take up to 7 and a half hours by train, with 3 changes. That’s ridiculous when it takes about 3 hours by car.

@LakieLady
Jaywick, yes! There was a documentary about it called Benefits By The Sea.

@dropitlikeitsloth, pre-Covid I often used to travel to a small city, 40 miles away. I could drive in 50 minutes, no problem, but the train took 1 hour 40. And it cost a bloody fortune!

It used to stop at tiny places I've never heard of, and I've lived in the county for 30 years.

I'm only 50 miles from London, so the SE isn't that much better, unless you're travelling into London. And then you'll stand all the way, unless you're travelling off-peak.

Public transport in this country is a joke outside of big cities.

@BarstewardofNorthstead

'Up north' as defined by the one hit wonders of KLF and Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.....

Bolton,
Barnsley,
Nelson,
Colne,
Burnley
Bradford,
Buxton,
Crewe,
Warrington,
Widnes,
Wigan,
Leeds,
Northwich,
Nantwich,
Knutsford,
Hull,
Sale,
Salford,
Southport,
Leigh,
Derby,
Kearsley
Keighley
Maghull,
Harrogate,
Huddersfield,
Oldham, Lancs,
Grimsby,
Glossop,
Hebden Bridge,

It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North.

Brighouse,
Bootle,
Featherstone,
Speke,
Runcorn,
Rotherham,
Rochdale,
Barrow,
Morecambe,
Macclesfield,
Lytham St. Annes
Clitheroe,
Cleethorpes,
The M62,

It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North.

Pendlebury,
Prestwich,
Preston,
York,
Skipton,
Scunthorpe,
Scarborough-on-Sea,
Chester,
Chorley,
Cheedle Hulme,
Ormskirk,
Accrington Stanley,
and Leigh,
Ossett,
Otley,
Ikley Moor,
Sheffield,
Manchester,
Castleford,
Skem,
Doncaster,
Dewsbury,
Hali-fax,
Bingley,
Bramall,
Are all in the North.

It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North

I live in the NE of England and live north of all of those places. What about Carlisle, Newcastle, Sunderland, Gateshead, Durham, Middlesbrough, Darlington, Hartlepool, Washington, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar, hell, even (the original) Richmond?

England = North, Midlands, South
Scotland = Highlands, Lowlands, Islands

No. England=Englandshire (there's a sign on the M8 in Glasgow directing you to 'Carlisle and The South).
Scotland=Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, the Highlands, the North East, the Central Belt, the Southern Uplands. Fife is like a teeny tiny Yorkshire and considers itself a separate Kingdom.

[quote MrsJamPanMan]@ToykotoLosAngeles
For me, the line goes through Stoke.

Which of the six towns are in the north? Just asking.[/quote]
All of them, sarcy. It's a big fat line.