AIBU to wonder how a government can be based in Manchester?

[dottiedodah]

Andy Burnham is proposing to govern from Manchester when he starts on July 20th.How can this be so ? Surely all previous governments have been based in London?

Does wit generator.

Maybe make a few more posts while you are here. It would be the green thing to do rather than travelling up and down every time you want to reply to someone.

You made me laugh so loudly, I may have woken the neighbours!

It's high time everyone - UK Gov, HOC, HOL, Civil Service - telecommuted 100% anyway. Fuddy-duddies were performatively outraged when Louise Mensch moved to the USA without telling anyone and still tried to collect her MP salary, but she was just ahead of her time.

Yet another thing for the benefits class to grab I suppose rather than have to consider getting a job.

With great annoyance to every other employee in government/media/civil service/security.

Oh for goodness sake!!! Get a grip. Its one new department of the Prime Minister’s office. The sky is not falling down. Manchester is perfectly lovely. We don’t bite. Not unless you ask nicely anyway.

Righto chuck. He’s made one speech and he’s not even prime minister yet. Other parts of government manage to work very well elsewhere.

Whippets.

I stand corrected, I say I stand corrected 😆

😂

'Magna est Ferretas' ... OMG I'm dying here 😂Nice one!

I agree. The reason housing is expensive "darn sarth" is because of high demand, high paying jobs, etc. The reason housing is cheap in some parts of the North and other regions is because of low supply because of lack of decent jobs, deprivation, etc. People can't have it both ways. London, for decades, has sucked people from the regions because it's where the decent jobs were centralised to, leaving a massive vacuum out in the regions. You reap what you sow!

Centralisation worked for London but sucked the life out of the regions.

The money that London generates helps to keep the rest of the UK afloat, so it's possibly not a good idea to abandon it just yet. The government being based there sends out the message that it's the centre of operations and no doubt keeps the financial sector somewhat tethered there. It wouldn't be good for the country if things started unravelling simply because the prime minister has been separated from his comfort blanket (Manchester).

Funny how other successful countries manage to have more than one "big" city.

I understand Germany has a few big influential cities, performing different functions, not all concentrated into one.

And that's the fault of people living 75 miles from London, is it?

No different to it not being the "fault" of people living in deprived areas who can't get a job. Different people in different areas have different problems, usually not entirely their own "fault".

We have Electricity and everything now, helps power Teams - which is how I have most meetings with SCS.

Just looking at reporting now, and only 22% of CS Digital jobs are in London, which I believe is reflective of the Civil Service as a whole. Being based outside of London is not an issue - snobbery around places like Wigan is.

Yeah, but the UK is a load of rubbish with no manufacturing or much industry anymore. We rely on the financial services sector in the capital city. It's an unfortunate truth.

Whippets charging down the M6 with a little packet of letters.

The UK is the World's 11th largest manufacturer and employs millions of people in the manufacturing sector. You really can't say we have "no manufacturing or much industry anymore".

It's very risky to "rely" on the financial services sector as it's highly portable to virtually any other city, and in fact, any other country and we're seeing a trickle of companies/funds moving abroad.

We need the UK to remain as a mixed economy and continuing to put "all our eggs in one basket" is utter stupidity.

The lack of dealing with the problems in the regions is dragging the UK down, all because of decades of centralising everything in and around London.

There used to be head offices of firms like insurance and pension firms in regions, but most were closed down and relocated to London, leaving vacuums behind. No reason at all why everything has to be London centric, especially these days with easy online/internet communications. It's not like banks and solicitors have to physically "walk" their legal documents and cheques between different firms anymore and not like meetings in person are needed anymore.

They don't all live in London!

even more reason to redress the issues with regional economic disparity caused by over centralisation and dependency on one sector, that is geographically easily transferable to other nations. Perhaps learn from the Manchester experience where the local economy is booming. We even have advanced manufacturing - shocker!

China is now using robots and other automated technology extensively in it's manufacturing industry, so the days are long gone when it was cheaper to make stuff in the East due to low wages. Wages aren't as important anymore. What's driving China now is the investment in automation.

Why aren't we doing that more in the UK? Why aren't the government spending money on encouraging high tech manufacturing in the UK to create jobs, etc., instead of just spunking it on benefits and paying ever increasing amounts for the consequences of deprivation, i.e. social problems, crime, vandalism, drugs, etc- all often a consequence of unemployment, boredom etc.

Surely now entire factories can be automated with very few staff, we should be investing heavily and building those factories in the UK? It's more of a level playing field now that wages costs aren't the most significant factor as they were back in the 70s and 80s when our manufacturing base was effectively "offshored" to low wage countries.