To think that austerity will hit the south the hardest this time ?

[Effiebriest]

Most research suggests that the North and its cities were hit the worst by austerity.
www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jan/28/deprived-northern-regions-worst-hit-by-uk-austerity-study-finds
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/north-south-divide-tory-austerity-conservatives-government-cameron-recession-a8667666.html
www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/austerity-cuts-twice-as-deep-in-england-as-rest-of-britain
www.localgov.co.uk/Englands-poorest-areas-hit-hardest-by-austerity/54120
Looking at my local town there is nothing left to cut. Anecdotal maybe but we lost 5 out of 15 libraries during austerity, well used ones as we are a fairly deprived town and not everyone has access to PCs. Last year our council was due to make £35 million pounds in cuts with the loss of a hundred jobs. Austerity never stopped but
apparently it's starting all over again. I really cannot comprehend how yet more services in our delapidated little town can be cut. Anyone think that Sunak and Hunt will have to move on to the more prosperous home counties as many places up here have already been squeezed financially dry and just don't have the same resilience.

Statistically I think we are all in for a kicking. I’m very much not looking forward to the budget. It’s why I’m still awake. worried.

Lol. I wonder how many people here have been to the south east. Have a stroll around Kent, East Sussex etc. You wouldn't be able to tell much difference between some of the most deprived places in the north and south east. Maybe a bit more sun.
Im not saying the north has got it easy by any stretch, but you have to be very well off to live in a nice part of Surrey. It's not all clean streets and plenty hospitals. We may have trains but who can afford them. The divide between rich and poor down here is insane. Everything is getting cut to the bones and it's the poor that is most effected. Those exist aplenty everywhere.

What about their response makes them a bigot?

@Meadowbreeze You can tell the difference. Not sure you realise how run down some places are now.

@VeniVidiWeeWee Bigoted against Cunt, cunts or M25 cunts? Sign me up! I hate them all!

So tired of hearing this whole north/south thing. Try living in the south west. I'm
In Somerset. We don't even have a decent road to London with part of it being just a standard two lane road.

I'm a northerner living in London. I used to think there was a north/south divide. There isn't, there's a London and the rest of the country divide.

All the money is here.

Absolutely agree. Closed up shops. Charities and services strained. People sleeping on the streets. A real marked change.

Nope.

I'm guessing you don't remember the 1970s to early 1990s. The Tories can ALWAYS find a way to heap more misery on the north. (And the other bits of the country they despise.)

I grew up in the north but have spent about half my life in the south, returned to the north recently and am beyond furious at just how much the north south divide has increased in the last 20 years. It bewilders me as to why so many people where I'm currently living insist on voting for people who despise them.Those who think Tories are going to be better locally than Labour are in for a bit of a nasty shock.

With the exception of nice little enclaves like Harrogate, Richmond, parts of York and the posh bits of Northumberland and Cheshire, the Tories have always loathed the north, it's not where most of them have their holiday homes or send their kids to school. They won't be happy until they see us all starving on street corners. And they are deliberately punishing labour voting areas for just that, with cuts in block grants and other support.

And that levelling up nonsense was just that, though I'm still gobsmacked at how many eejits fell for it....

Interesting times ahead, all right....

I've lived in both the north west and the south east; the south east doesn't know the meaning of the word austerity. Can't really blame the people, but we're talking year upon year of cuts and diminishing budgets and lack of government spending, investment and support.

Just adding, that doesn't mean there aren't very deprived parts of the south, there are, and that has become more visible since 2010 (can't think what happened that year....) However the north has been consistently ground down for longer, overall.

I do agree with the previous poster on the London/rest of the country gap, although it's certain parts of London that are still doing very well thank you.

I sometimes look around and don't recognise the country I grew up in.

These generalised north/south opinions are so frustrating.

DH is from W Yorks, we lived there for a few years, now live in Hampshire but are frequently up and down.

Yes, there are areas of deprivation up there, for example areas ruined in the Thatcher era which have never really recovered.

Yes there is money here, but the wealth is concentrated in a small percentage of the population. There are some very rich people in Winchester for example - but the gap between rich and poor is stark.

There are also huge areas of deprivation in towns and cities such as Southampton/Portsmouth/Gosport to name a few. Town centres full of empty shops if you take a walk through Basingstoke or Fareham.

Even in London - try telling people in Tower Hamlets that ‘all the money is here’.

You could argue that public sector workers are in a much stronger position up north. Same wage, cheaper housing/petrol/pretty much everything.
There are also really affluent places in the north.

Any analysis will show you that the greatest concentration of wealth is in the south east, but believe me, the people who have it aren’t sharing.

People are on their arses here too.

London Council boroughs and their local services are equally straining as are those in the North.

The difference is simply there are less services and options anywhere else compared to SE. But the SE services are so in demand they too are compromised.

The areas such as Greenwich, Chelsea (where a lot of MPs live) are not the norm. They are affluent and the majority won't be hit but there will always be exceptions.

I'm from the North and live in the North but work a lot in the SE. The North is groaning under the strain and many people will break, businesses are going under and services are failing now. The huge difference is we do not have the job options. It takes years to find a job and there are 50+applicants for most jobs. Our services are propped up by charities who are failing fast because of funding. People will die this year because of poverty, no food, no heat and declining health. This is not likely to be in great numbers in the SE. It will be higher in the deprived areas.

My job is 250 miles away from where I live and I'm not unusual in this. The work is in the SE.

What a load of bollocks. There’s poverty in areas of London that would make your eyes water.

This jealousy of London gave us Brexit and now we’re all poorer. The cuts should be 100% focused on Brexit voting areas. They said it was a price worth paying so we could have sunlit uplands and Brexit benefits such as the crown on pint glasses and blue passports. Let them pay it. London certainly did not vote for Brexit or Tory in 2019.

Let the red wall pay for our reduced GDP. Better still let’s not introduce austerity at all as it’s as unnecessary now as it was under Cameron’s government, it’s ideological Tory small state rubbish. It’s investment that’s needed to kick start the economy. We also know how this will play out. The country will continue to decline and the thick will blame Londoners for all of this and vote against people even worse to spite their face by cutting off their nose.

I wish they would cancel HS2.
Complete waste of money.

They will support areas that are more likely to vote for them. They are giving local areas more power to increase council tax. Wealthier southern areas will have more scope to do this and will have better scope to support services as a result. The levelling up agenda looks pretty dead.

Hampshire and Kent Councils are said to be on the edge of bankruptcy at the moment.

Living in Hampshire, we've already had surveys on our willingness to accept higher increases in council tax and police surcharges.

The towns that cope better are those with a mix of employers. We have large IT, food &bev, financial services, engineering, public sector plus traditional agriculture, horse racing etc. All the smart projects will disappear but it's expected to last two years so we'll cope. We won't have any choice!

Er Croydon council is bankrupt. Croydon town centre is filthy, full of boarded up shops and knife crime. Not exactly awash with public funds. And this is not only South, but Greater London. Everywhere is suffering to a degree.

I was going to mention Croydon Council. I remember the reports of the horrific conditions people were living in, in council accommodation, during lockdown. I admit I haven't visited many northern towns but one of the most depressed/deprived areas I've ever seen was in Somerset.

I live in the South East.
The streetlamp outside my house has been out for nearly 3 years.
My town has 6 charity shops and not much else as they have all closed down.
Buses run once every two hours to the nearest big town. My 80 year old mum has got to go to hospital next week so l am taking her as there is no other way to get there on public transport.
My friend volunteers at the foodbank and says how much busier they are now.
But yeah it is sunnier in summer although not were what that has got to do with the price of eggs (which have recently gone up in price a lot!)

Can you get a bus or train? Could you survive without a car?
Is there a motorway where you live?
Is there a high school within 5 miles of your house? (Not a good high school, just an actual high school).
Do you have a job and a realistic prospect of getting another if you were to lose it?

I agree with PPs that it's more London versus the rest of the UK.

In 2020/21, transport spending in London was £1,476 per capita, compared with £622 in the North West and £543 in the North East. That's not even the worst! It's £477 per head in the East Midlands and South West England.

Then you look at the arts funding. Arts Council England currently spends £21 a head in London and an average of £6 a head in the rest of England.

I am in a small Yorkshire borough. This summer residents had to clear the paths and trim the overgrown weeds, the grass verges and remove the leaves from the streets themselves so that we could walk properly to our houses. The swimming pool has been closed since 2020, the leisure centre is closed with a view to redeveloping it and that project has now been shelved indefinitely, the local library is closed. When questioned the council say all money is spent on social care. I don't know where any more cuts can be made.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to live in. The south now?!
It's £2k a month to rent a family home here.
£3.337 a year to commute to work on average.
It's fucking cheap to live up North!

This! I live near Southampton which is described as a northern town on the south coast. Large pockets of deprivation and a large industrial workforce at the docks. We missed out on the city of culture to a northern town earlier this year which was really gutting as the funding would have done so much good. Locally, Hampshire County Council has warned that it could go bankrupt soon, and Eastleigh Borough Council had recent finance issues. It’s not all champagne and caviar down south…