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?

South =/= London and the South East.

Regions =/= North

Londoners won’t be buying in deprived areas….

I think you'll find that Vimto is an invention from the FAR North. We're so far North that people forget we exist while arguing about the geography of the "UK" which we're, apparently, no longer a part of. 😀Plus, wait until you hear about Mothers Pride. 😉

I live in the midlands, Manchester is 90 miles North of me.

Well that's a new one on me. How do you BUY, a fully furnished house? Was it the show home?

How far is Scotland to the north of you?

According to numerous threads on here, Londoners won't be buying anywhere as none of them can afford it.

South also includes the South West….

No they buy close to the deprived areas in naice villages and countryside locations where house prices are held back because they're close to deprived areas, with no/few decent high paid employment, etc., but close enough to "naicer" places that have decent shops and other amenities just an hour away.

No one thinks they're going to buy a run down terraced house in the middle of the worst parts of central Liverpool or Newcastle or Bradford. They're in the naicer suburbs.

What does that prove? My niece paid £420K for a two bed terrace in Wilmslow. It would have been less than half of that in parts of Kent. There are parts of the north that are much more expensive than parts of the south.

Why are people thinking that expensive houses are better? Not you.

I read on here that people have bought a "doer up" whatever that is, for an eyewatering amount and then wonder why they can't afford a night out.

If his tactic for the nation is to follow the Manchester template then look forward to shiny glossy tall buildings with foreign investment funds as landlords and streets littered with homeless, alcoholics and addicts. Yes, Manchester looks great on camera, in the right lighting from good angles but take a long walk around and it’s sadly a very different reality and that’s without venturing beyond the city centre into the surrounding towns….

So housing growth is bad? Should we only be allowed 2 up/2 down brick terraces? Yes, there are homeless people. As there are in all cities and large towns. And as regards surrounding towns, have you been to Stockport lately? It has significant regeneration, instigated by the person Burnham wants to lead the new office in the north.

I don't know Manchester well enough, but I've been a couple of times recently and have thought it was maybe all "smoke and mirrors", having had the misfortune to drive through a pretty rough/deprived area just a few minutes away from the thriving looking centre, and despite the immediate city centre looking vibrant, lots of the streets just a few minutes walk away are run down and semi-derelict.

One of my clients was fooled into buying a couple of flats in one of the new high rise blocks a few years ago and lost an absolute shed load of cash when he had to offload them as literally no one wanted to rent them from him as there were entire floors in the block unoccupied and it was a bit of a high rise ghost town and seemed to have got a very bad reputation within a year or two of being built! Apparently most of the flats had been bought by foreign investors as long term investments with no intention at all for them to be lived in, so just being left empty. My client just had to cut his losses as he couldn't keep paying the mortgages on them with no rental income!

It does seem a lot of the "smoke and mirrors" look of rejuvenation is based on foreign property investment and blocks of new student flats for the Uni.

I don’t disagree! I was just making the point that living in the north doesn’t mean that we’re all buying £90K houses. It’s only in deprived areas with few jobs/transport links that you can find property that cheap and not many people would choose to live there.

The consensus on MN is that ALL southern property is expensive, while ALL northerners have paid less than £100K and we’ve all got it easy. My (southern) friend once said “It’s much easier for your DCs because they’ll be paying a lot smaller mortgage than my DCs”. When I asked how much they’d paid for their houses it turned out that both had bought cheaper homes than my northern DCs, even though they’re all very similar starter homes. She was really shocked that housing could be so expensive in <gasp> the north.

Pretty much, nobody boted him in PM...how he is suddenly given god powers without any scrutiny

exactly...it looks very totalitarian right now...he has not been voted for PM, apparently journalists questions were not allowed in this Museum meeting. Sorry but who is this little shit and who he thinks he is

No different to Gordon Brown, Theresa May (the first time), Boris Johnson (the first time), Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak.

“given God powers”. Pretty minor god if the extent of his powers is setting up a new department in Manchester rather than London. Nobody votes for our Prime Minister- we elect representatives-MPs - who choose a leader to govern. Sigh.

Rude. This is Mumsnet not X. Tsk.

Totalitarian 😂 Surely not words from a Reform supporter? That would be the dream for that lot.

Nobody votes anyone in as PM. PM is just whoever is leader of the largest party. The powers arent god given either - they are given by our political system.
And the government isn’t moving. One government department is having an office in Manchester.

Totalitarian, OMG. 😂

But as for 'he has not been voted for PM', we've had numerous instances in recent-ish living memory of the title being passed between various Tories without it triggering a general election (assuming that's what you meant). Did that bother you as well, or are you just objecting now because it's Labour?

I have read most (but not all) of the thread. I don’t think Andy Burnham has been particularly specific on what he plans to do.

I live in London and would be in favour of large chunks of government being relocated up north … if the PM decides that he can do his job at least partly outside London then that is up to him.

HOWEVER I really hope that this means that all the protests at Whitehall / Palace of Westminster also relocate. There is something every Saturday and they are so often incredibly disruptive. I sometimes have a chat with a policeman who fills me in on the three or four protests that day that they are having to manage.

Of course housing growth isn’t bad, but once you actually look closely the Manchester story is not quite the cut and dry success sensation people think it is. Take the glossy facade away and underneath the bare bones are a city centre with a huge influx of residents with insufficient services and infrastructure to support them.

Step outside the city centre and you’re met with significantly deprived suburbs just a stones throw away from wealthy international students and professionals living in glass towers. The contrast is pretty stark.

The model for Manchester was ‘build it and they will come’ which they have done but ‘they’ are not majority local, the growth and aspiration was imported wealth from outside the city and country and the ordinary people get to stare up at them from down below and wonder where exactly their place lies within the city.