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.

@jocktamsonsbairn are you talking about central London or the south east? There are lots of places in the south east where it's very very hard to find employment. If you do find it, good luck getting there without a car.
It's not really a them and us argument. You can tell me all about how great the theatres and trains are that I supposedly have access too. Won't be able to afford any, neither do most kids living even just outside London. Many go to London for the first time on a school trip. This imaginary land of rich people and jobs up for grabs just doesn't exist. Gig economy can get lost. People need permanent secure employment. Most companies are pissing off to the north or to mainland Europe.

@MuraRocker you obviously do not know the south east at. There is much poverty here, 100s of food banks, no housing, unless you can afford a one bed apartment in a new build for 450k in my area, and people living in containers next to them!
I met a friend yesterday who, after getting her latest electric bill, won't be putting the heating on at, hotwster bottles and sleeping bags.
Please, all people in the north, realise there is huge deprivation in the south east.

That's in addition to a £6900 energy bill. Yes, we might have more job opportunities, but it's completely extortionate living here.

There is also poverty & homelessness.

Of course more money is spent where there are millions more people!

I'm in the south, where is this land of plenty please? Libraries closed, community centre knocked down and not replaced, no school places, long waits for ambulances, a&e queue out the door, waiting times for consultant appointments now 6 months+. Food bank use up over 500%. Roads are a mess, falling apart. No shops left in town centre.

to answer the question without having RTFT - no. Because austerity has already hit the north really hard. The starting positions are vastly different. Austerity in the south may be harsh, but they'll manage. In the north? we'll see.

@2tired2careanymore the answer is no to every single one of these questions for a lot of people in the south east, I'm talking between Surrey and Kent, not even further west where it's even worse. Even small towns have lost nearly all their bus network, I'm not talking villages. The elderly are relying on the kindness of their neighbours to organise transport for them. Social care is dead. Youth crime and violence is at uncontrollable levels. No one can afford to live here on a carers wage, when even a rented rooms is going for £750 a month. Boarded up shops in every town. As for London, in my very deprived side of the borough, nearly all police stations have closed. The last one open is boarded up for refurbishent. There are parents getting a crime reference number for a stabbing. A stabbing. No visit. No detective work or finding the attacker. There is no winners in this little game of who has it worse.

@Endlesssummer2022 100% agree. Brexiteers have a lot to answer for.

They were openly willing to sacrifice prosperity for sovereignty. So they should now pay extra in taxes to make up for the brexit induced losses to the economy.

I live in the south east and work for the council, we are struggling too. Please can we not make this a north vs south fight?

All our fury should be aimed at the Tories

I'm sure there are very clear examples of how the North have it much worse, but libraries? We've had loads of libraries and leisure centres closed down. Some were able to turn into community volunteer libraries and some like self service. But I don't think libraries are a good example, definitely not 10 libraries in my area, not that we ever had 15 to begin with.

We have huge divide from street to street. Now people on rich streets get to increase their house prices and health through LTNs. Meanwhile, on the poorer streets house prices drop and children get ill because of concentrated fumes. All made by our wonderful council. They say to use the great public transport instead of drive but the buses get cancelled in grid lock.

We go to a school further away because there are so many shootings and so much gang crime in our area. Police station after police station is shut down and left as an empty boarded up building.

Rent for commercial property is staggeringly high meaning we can only have high streets either full of big business chains or a constant turn over of pop up shops.

I imagine people think we all live in the glittering glass towers near the river. The majority of us don't.

We do this in my small town in the South East!

@WrongWayApricot It seems the only businesses in our borough that can afford the retail rent are casinos in the poor areas and estate agents in the rich ones. Otherwise it's all boarded up shops, a chicken shop here and there and an off-licence.
@FancyFanny we did this in my London borough. Yes London. Had to call it guerilla gardening so we don't all fall into a depression over where our massive council taxes go. Our library is open 2 hours a day but that's only because it's fully self service and the building is open for the council customer service. 2 hours a day you've got if you need to sort anything out. Nothing running in the children's library anymore.

Agree with all those saying it’s a London v the rest of the UK issue. And yes, of course there are people living in desperate poverty in London, but that’s got nothing to do with the amount of funding received.

I live in London with close connections to the rural SE and it is a hell of a lot easier to be poor here; free public transport for under-18s, good, cheap public transport for the rest of us. Better schools, more hospitals and other health facilities, easier access to cheap food, free museums…. And don’t get me started on the inequality in rail funding between London and the North. It’s an absolute disgrace.

But YABU, OP, in expecting anything to change.

Scotland here. I hear moaning that the higher rate (40% in rUK) income tax band is due to be frozen at £50,271, dragging more into the higher rate band. I empathise but would like to point out that the higher rate income tax band here was frozen here many moons ago. We pay 41% on earnings over £43,662. For worse services and a government systematically destroying woman’s rights. Allowed to do this as they make up all sorts of unicorn nonsense about independence and the thick-as-mince-gullible believe it and vote SNP. Its shite.

So having read all about how shit it is up north and how shit it is down south I was just wondering what anybody was planning to do about it ?

@ScentOfSawdust I agree with you on the transport end. The lack of investment up north is criminal. London has so far managed to protect the u18s free travel but it's likely not going to go on much longer. As for it being affordable for the rest, surely you're joking. Aside from a few cheap super off peak tickets, most people can't afford train travel down here. People working NMW jobs in the city can't afford the tube. So many people in our community spend hours in traffic on busses just to save a few pounds.
I live in a very close community. So many families are moving up north. 3 have moved to Doncaster. I've visited it. Their quality of life has improved massively. They all work in supermarkets, AO/EO level civil service or TA type jobs. They no longer live in bedsits, can afford to go on days out with their families. Their kids have finally got braces after waiting 3 years in london. As for how run down it is, it's no different to our part of London.
It is a sad situation everywhere.
And a lot of the points being made about access are rural or small town areas. The same lack of facilities exists in the south east.

I think you've got it a bit backwards, OP, though the impact is the same.

It's not that the cuts are actually targeted so much at the north as a whole (though there has definitely been some nakedly political shifting of funds). It's as much that some places are less prosperous already, with less private sector employment and therefore more reliant on public sector employment, so when public sector cuts happen the impact on the local economy is much greater. And so the shops and restaurants close, etc.

Until we tackle our woeful productivity performance outside London and pockets of the SE (by no means all of it) the pattern will continue. I saw a horrifying study recently that looked at productivity in European cities - while London's per worker output is near the top, all of our other big cities' productivity are way below average. That then hits satellite towns and rural areas.

That's not saying the people in Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Newscastle etc don't work hard. They do. But there is a huge and chronic lack of business and industrial investment in those places that would raise output. And that's not just about straight government spending, it's about our total lack of any kind of industrial strategy, proper long term plans to support and build strategically important industries (look at the semi-conductor issue and how the Dutch had a long term strategy, and saw it through even though they were losing money in the short term, now they're raking in the cash, employing huge numbers, exporting everywhere and paying lots of tax), proper investment in skills and automation. And yes there are spending elements to that but much more important is how that spending is targeted and sticking to a long term plan.

We are at the natural result of a dedication to the wisdom of markets and free market economics. Markets turn out to be dreadful at building and supporting thriving communities. They're not always right. But unfortunately nearly 30 of the last 43 years, we've been run by people who have blind faith and devotion to markets over economic planning, and its led to concentrations of productivity and prosperity, and screw the rest.

@JassyRadlett exactly, well explained. 👏👏👏

Absolutely.
Notting Hill. West London.
Extraordinary wealth a few metres from deprivation.

"How many shops there are and restaurants and how they appear is nothing to do with austerity cuts or councils, they are private businesses"

😂 I don't know where to start with that one.

Good point

@JassyRadlett agree. The level of investment up here is abysmal (although we have plenty of NMW jobs working in Amazon warehouses with literally hundreds of applicants).
There 's a great series (Vlog?) by John Harris and John Domokos 'Anywhere but Westminster'. Eye opening and admittedly not northern centric in it's tales of the UKs decline.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2021/jun/25/anywhere-but-westminster-10-years-in-10-minutes-video

I am now in Scotland. I used to live in the Midlands. The government had been promising to improve public transport there for years. It still has not happened.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2022/oct/26/how-deep-in-crisis-is-britain-this-tory-heartland-knows-the-answer-video
Actually this pretty much says what plenty on here have said. But sadly despite this I suspect they'll continue to vote the same way or not at all.

Above link is in Basingstoke apparently.

I live within 50 miles of London (albeit outside of the M25) and the notion that the south have it better than the north is utter tosh! Our roads are in an appalling state, local hospitals can’t cope with demand so invariably you’re treated elsewhere. Many empty shops and units, homelessness, deprivation, much reduced bus services, library closures and so on.

Yet, a new build three bedroom semi-detached house has just sold for £450k in my village. It may be a prime commuter area, but an annual season ticket is £4,480 to Liverpool Street, but you’d also need to add on parking fees/bus fares too.

My relatives, who live in the north west, could not believe that we pay £16.50 to have 10 windows/doors cleaned every four weeks by our window cleaner - and that’s cheap, one quoted £24. I’m all for levelling up if I can pay northern prices down south!!