When you live in the North, it’s easy to forget sometimes that London is part of the same country. After all, when you talk to people from the North West, the North East, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there’s a sense that, however disparate we are as a people, we’re all in it together. We’re all being screwed out of our jobs together, we’re all losing our public services together and we’re all pissed off at London together.
If the regions of Great Britain were a family, then London would be the irritating older brother who doesn’t come to dinner much since he got his new girlfriend and a flash car. And when he does show up, he talks endlessly about himself, whilst eating more than his share of bread rolls. The rest of the family stare at him in horror and wonder how this greedy, self-important prick can be related to the rest of them.
Since devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it's like they’ve all gone and married off into other families, so whilst London is still a source of irritation for them, at least they have some say in their own households now. And when they all come home for Christmas and find the North being picked on, London arrogantly snarls "it's none of your business anymore." The North West and North East are still living at home, waiting for London to bring back the car he borrowed so they can head down to the Job Centre to sign on.
Because there’s always been a gap between living standards in the North and the South, but as with all regrettable gaps (the gap between rich and poor, the gap between public service provision and public need, the gap between Piers Morgan’s perceived worth in the eyes of television commissioners and Piers Morgan’s perceived worth in the eyes of everyone else), it’s getting wider instead of smaller. The public service cuts will inevitably have a larger effect on areas with the highest level of need, because these are the areas that have traditionally received the bigger share of government funds. You can’t cut as much from councils like Kensington and Chelsea, because there’s simply not as much to cut.
Which means that whilst London will notice relatively little change over the next couple of years, the North East and North West will lose tens of thousands of public service jobs, as well as experiencing significant cutbacks in education, health services, housing and policing. This in turn means wider unemployment, falling aspirations, voluntary organisations losing their funding and a dark cloud cast over the towns that are most affected.
If you seriously believe that it’s in Britain’s economic interests to cut public expenditure in favour of reducing the deficit, then try moving to Bolton or Oldham or Newcastle for a year. Once you’ve struggled up to your new home on an overcrowded, overpriced train, you can start scrambling around for a job. Of course there are no new public sector jobs, so you'll have to go for one of the rare private sector jobs that are created in the North (just one in the North East created for every ten created in the South). This will make it even more difficult for you to get one of the few affordable homes, and no more are being created because new build initiatives are being ended. When you eventually find a job, you can look forward to clocking off late every day, travelling home down pothole-filled roads and switching on the TV to a news report on the latest government cut and how it will disproportionately affect the region you now call home.
Yeah, yeah. It’s rough all over, I know. Unless you’re a city banker. Or a Conservative politician. Or a newspaper editor. The point is that, whenever things are bad for the majority of people down South, they’re that much worse for us in the North. And because we’re trapped by lower wages, family connections and lack of opportunity, many of us will stay in the North and put up with it for the rest of our lives, whilst London runs around getting girls pregnant and starting feuds with the neighbours.
And the worst of it is that the North didn’t even help to vote in the fuckwits who are making policy right now. In the North West, the Tories won just 22 out of 75 seats, compared to Labour who won 47. In the North East, Labour took 25 out of 29 seats, compared to the Conservative and Liberal Democrats who won just two seats apiece. Even in relatively affluent Yorkshire, Labour won 32 seats against the Conservatives 18 seats. The entire narrative of politics in this country (the big story of 2010 suposedly being that voters turned away from Labour and threw their lot in with the Tories) is based on what happens in the South, with few people even noticing that the North is effectively experiencing a different history entirely.
So maybe it’s time to take action. If London insists on pissing away its money on cocaine and prostitutes, then fine. But let us have nothing more to do with it. Let the North secede from the United Kingdom and become a sovereign nation, with its own parliament, its own powers to raise taxes and its own decision-making powers about how we spend our money. From the Southern point of view, we’re just a burden anyway. So let us go our own way. That way we can decide for ourselves whether or not hospitals and social workers are an unnecessary luxury, and London can shag as many teenagers as it likes without having to explain itself.
If the regions of Great Britain were a family, then London would be the irritating older brother who doesn’t come to dinner much since he got his new girlfriend and a flash car. And when he does show up, he talks endlessly about himself, whilst eating more than his share of bread rolls. The rest of the family stare at him in horror and wonder how this greedy, self-important prick can be related to the rest of them.
Since devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it's like they’ve all gone and married off into other families, so whilst London is still a source of irritation for them, at least they have some say in their own households now. And when they all come home for Christmas and find the North being picked on, London arrogantly snarls "it's none of your business anymore." The North West and North East are still living at home, waiting for London to bring back the car he borrowed so they can head down to the Job Centre to sign on.
Because there’s always been a gap between living standards in the North and the South, but as with all regrettable gaps (the gap between rich and poor, the gap between public service provision and public need, the gap between Piers Morgan’s perceived worth in the eyes of television commissioners and Piers Morgan’s perceived worth in the eyes of everyone else), it’s getting wider instead of smaller. The public service cuts will inevitably have a larger effect on areas with the highest level of need, because these are the areas that have traditionally received the bigger share of government funds. You can’t cut as much from councils like Kensington and Chelsea, because there’s simply not as much to cut.
Which means that whilst London will notice relatively little change over the next couple of years, the North East and North West will lose tens of thousands of public service jobs, as well as experiencing significant cutbacks in education, health services, housing and policing. This in turn means wider unemployment, falling aspirations, voluntary organisations losing their funding and a dark cloud cast over the towns that are most affected.
If you seriously believe that it’s in Britain’s economic interests to cut public expenditure in favour of reducing the deficit, then try moving to Bolton or Oldham or Newcastle for a year. Once you’ve struggled up to your new home on an overcrowded, overpriced train, you can start scrambling around for a job. Of course there are no new public sector jobs, so you'll have to go for one of the rare private sector jobs that are created in the North (just one in the North East created for every ten created in the South). This will make it even more difficult for you to get one of the few affordable homes, and no more are being created because new build initiatives are being ended. When you eventually find a job, you can look forward to clocking off late every day, travelling home down pothole-filled roads and switching on the TV to a news report on the latest government cut and how it will disproportionately affect the region you now call home.
Yeah, yeah. It’s rough all over, I know. Unless you’re a city banker. Or a Conservative politician. Or a newspaper editor. The point is that, whenever things are bad for the majority of people down South, they’re that much worse for us in the North. And because we’re trapped by lower wages, family connections and lack of opportunity, many of us will stay in the North and put up with it for the rest of our lives, whilst London runs around getting girls pregnant and starting feuds with the neighbours.
And the worst of it is that the North didn’t even help to vote in the fuckwits who are making policy right now. In the North West, the Tories won just 22 out of 75 seats, compared to Labour who won 47. In the North East, Labour took 25 out of 29 seats, compared to the Conservative and Liberal Democrats who won just two seats apiece. Even in relatively affluent Yorkshire, Labour won 32 seats against the Conservatives 18 seats. The entire narrative of politics in this country (the big story of 2010 suposedly being that voters turned away from Labour and threw their lot in with the Tories) is based on what happens in the South, with few people even noticing that the North is effectively experiencing a different history entirely.
So maybe it’s time to take action. If London insists on pissing away its money on cocaine and prostitutes, then fine. But let us have nothing more to do with it. Let the North secede from the United Kingdom and become a sovereign nation, with its own parliament, its own powers to raise taxes and its own decision-making powers about how we spend our money. From the Southern point of view, we’re just a burden anyway. So let us go our own way. That way we can decide for ourselves whether or not hospitals and social workers are an unnecessary luxury, and London can shag as many teenagers as it likes without having to explain itself.
