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?

It will be terrible moving anything out of London. Just imagine if in the long term some jobs & money were moved from London up to the backward North!

Devolution is another layer of overpaid civil servants.

MPs should be able to represent and argue for their constituency needs.

If you used the money every mayor spent around the country on the things the local.mps wanted we'd be better off.

The answer is never more civil service.

Well I vote we have him here in the Cotswolds. We might get our potholes fixed then….

Surely moving is going to cost a shitload of money we don’t have?! It isn’t cheap to move house, let alone a parliament. Totally unnecessary expenditure.

Even if it’s just a department, it’s going to cost a lot.
It’s very easy to spend other people’s money, to make your life easier. Burnham is giving us a taste of how he is going to throw our money away.

You do realise that Manchester has an international airport and a road system. The King attends Parliament once a year for the state opening. The PM visits the King each week at whichever royal residence he’s staying in at the time.

Oh for goodness sake. Its one department. Believe it or not, we already have government departments outside London.

Its not the whole parliament, its one new department in. This is just daft.

lol we do have infrastructure in the north. Also spaces to work that aren’t our back gardens. And places to entertain people, even high oop folk. There are also even some civil service depts based here already - imagine!

Even so, I’d love to see a cost breakdown

Absolutely. Strip out the highly paid London civil servants and give the money directly to local councils who know their communities best. Less civil servants, more local power and devision making. Great idea.

Why? Do you ask to see cost breakdowns of every locational decision made by Government? The ICO is shortly moving from Wilmslow to Manchester. Have you asked for the costings for that?

Neither did Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss.

Look at the figures .
Money generated IN London and the South.
Not elsewhere.
The financial district alone generates far far more than the whole of Manchester and anywhere else in the UK.

I do wonder how it’s going to cost all this money? People do realise that we all work in a laptop now, which can be plugged in from anywhere. There is already CS office space in Manchester to use. No ICT costs, no new rent ..where is the cost?

A bit of Longfellas great poem.

That this is the place that has helped shape the world
And that this the place where a Manchester girl
Name of Emmeline Pankhurst from the streets of Moss Side
Led a Suffragette City with sisterhood pride

And this is the place with appliance of science
We’re on it, atomic, we strut with defiance
In the face of a challenge we always stand tall
Mancunians in union delivered it all

Such as housing and libraries, and health, education
And unions and co-ops, the first railway station
So we’re sorry! Bear with us! We invented commuters!
But we hope you forgive us – we invented computers!

I’d imagine it would be a cost saving if you factored in getting rid of fancy Whitehall buildings and the reduced cost of wages including London weighting.

I don’t trust our local council, so no thanks.

Absolutely. He’s going to set this department up anyway, so it can use existing office space used by government offices in Manchester. The salaries will be the same wherever its located. So what’s the additional cost of being in Manchester to London? There’s an awful lot of pearl clutching about a small modicum of power daring to be based outside the blessed capital. I do wonder if these people have ever ventured outside the M25?

I never thought I would say this, but The Tories may be back in power sooner than they thought!

Yes, but where are their customers/workers based? A millionaire living in Sunderland will be having their "profit" made by their London based investment management firm shown as London derived income/profit, even if the investment advisor is also living in Sunderland.

Likewise, if, say, Tesco has its head office in London, it's profits show up in London statistics, even though the customers/workers are actually buying/selling stuff in Harlepool.

We should be producing and using statistics based on where the customers are spending their money and where the workers are actually doing the work. Not based on where the "back office" and "head office" functions are carried out, which can literally be anywhere.

Nope, Labour have a big enough majority to see it through to 2029. They'd be insane to push for a GE before then as it's blindingly obvious they'd lose, based on current opinion polls. In fact not just lose, but probably consigned to history, just like the Libdems have crashed and burned after Clegg and now the hapless Davey.

Do you know what Parliament is?

Can you show us where anyone has suggested moving Parliament to Manchester?

This is just scaremongering nonsense. Burnham has suggested moving more government offices or departments away from London, something which many different governments over many different years from both major parties have done.

There is no suggestion of moving Parliament.

Yes! Always North V South. It’s like we don’t exist .

You’d be surprised where I’ve ventured to 🙄

i couldn’t really give a shit where it is, but it does seem like it’s yet more tinkering to distract people further while Rome burns.