How To Fix 'The North'?

[endure]

Is part of the problem, then, that we didn't innovate as the world started to change?

That's not meant as a criticism of the North, more that the government (successive governments) looked at the way the wind was blowing and decided "managed decline" was the solution, leaving the North in the hole it's in now?

(For reference, lived mostly in the south, but was in Derby in 2008 when the contract for new Underground trains went to Hyundai and the Bombardier works closed, and have spent a while working in the joy that is Oldham)

That will be the same Bombardier that's currently recruiting 400 new staff to join the 2,000 already there to help build the £900 million order for South Western Railway or the orders for Greater Anglia and West Midlands Trains?

News of their death is greatly exaggerated

 

[cowgoesmoo]

I'm going to take the opposing position. And for the record I was born in the north and lived/worked in the south for years.

London's probably one of the most successful and richest places on the planet, it's only rival on the global scale is New York. The only part of the UK that actually has a net contribution to the countries finances. Why take this money away and spend even more taxpayer money on useless vanity projects in the north that will have little benefit? London has been successful due to the entrepreneurial mindset and the willing to graft hard, not by sitting around blaming Thatcher for the last 40 years. Just like south Wales there is an atmosphere up here of blaming London and the SE for the regions own failings in adapting to the changing world. Manufacturing has gone. Heavy industry has gone. Mining has gone. Man up and start paying your own way instead of trying to live off of subsidies from the productive and profitable SE.

 

[endure]

I'm going to take the opposing position. And for the record I was born in the north and lived/worked in the south for years.

London's probably one of the most successful and richest places on the planet, it's only rival on the global scale is New York. The only part of the UK that actually has a net contribution to the countries finances. Why take this money away and spend even more taxpayer money on useless vanity projects in the north that will have little benefit? London has been successful due to the entrepreneurial mindset and the willing to graft hard, not by sitting around blaming Thatcher for the last 40 years. Just like south Wales there is an atmosphere up here of blaming London and the SE for the regions own failings in adapting to the changing world. Manufacturing has gone.

UK Manufacturing Statistics

According to the UK Manufacturing Statistics, UK manufacturing contributes £6.7tr to the global economy and the UK is in the world's top ten.

www.themanufacturer.com

 

[Tool]

I have seen some of our work go to the Philippines of all places, and jobs that were once filled by people in their forties called Geoff or Sandra are now being done by people called Ilario or Assumpta who are recent graduates. Are they doing a good job? Not at the moment, no, but a condition of Geoff and Sandra's generous severance package is that they get these young Filipinos up to speed, and in two or five years time they will be good enough and Geoff and Sandra will be enjoying retirement and there will be no new Geoffs and Sandras coming along to replace them.

Some 80% of UK blue collar jobs simply melted away to Asia 30 or 40 years ago, the same is about to happen to UK white collar jobs, with only a few highly specialised or security-sensitive jobs being left in the UK.

I think you'll find that the majority of the "offshored" jobs are linked to an 80/20 split - 80% of the offshore people will be moved off the client after 1 year. This is a management decision and the business model being implemented across a lot of the "offshore" companies.

 

[Speedy]

I'm going to take the opposing position. And for the record I was born in the north and lived/worked in the south for years.

London's probably one of the most successful and richest places on the planet, it's only rival on the global scale is New York. The only part of the UK that actually has a net contribution to the countries finances. Why take this money away and spend even more taxpayer money on useless vanity projects in the north that will have little benefit? London has been successful due to the entrepreneurial mindset and the willing to graft hard, not by sitting around blaming Thatcher for the last 40 years. Just like south Wales there is an atmosphere up here of blaming London and the SE for the regions own failings in adapting to the changing world. Manufacturing has gone. Heavy industry has gone. Mining has gone. Man up and start paying your own way instead of trying to live off of subsidies from the productive and profitable SE.

If you actually read the Kerslaw reports you will see that initally London was chosen as the most favoured recipient of central govt investment. The hope was that this would create a trickle down effect to that would help out other regions.
This did not happen, but the continued tax payer funded investment in London did, and to the detriment of other regions. If you go back not long before the 80's you'll find that London wasn't the golden calf that fed the countries finances, but the industrial midlands and upwards were.
It was only since the de-industrialisation in the 80's (and there were many reasons why this was inevitable) that London began to turn into what it is today.
It's not about Thatcher as politicians of every hue decided that London was the way to go. Just ook at how Labour has switched its focus from the working class to minorities and other urban based groups.
Yes, London is sucessful now, but it is (largely) at the cost to other regions, and this was done in no small amount via the spending of public finances in a whole swathes of areas such as transport, the arts and public facilities.
Your answer does seem to be made soly of 'keep govt spending in London as I live here and it's nice and the rest of you will just have to visit, and oh, btw, keep paying for this for me please'.
It's not about blaming Thatcher (she did what was needed to be done), but that lack of almost any kind of investment for the north over many different govts. They simply didn't 'get it'.

 

[endure]

How many UK companies have HQ in London where they report their profits even though those profits are made elsewhere in the country?

 

[Toastie]

That will be the same Bombardier that's currently recruiting 400 new staff to join the 2,000 already there to help build the £900 million order for South Western Railway or the orders for Greater Anglia and West Midlands Trains?

News of their death is greatly exaggerated

The lads in Crewe will be pleased. Most of Crewe works is now housing with Bombardier having a tiny maintenance presence. The biggest set up now is LNER which Pete Waterman set up IIRC as a bit of a hobby. “Biggest” is a relative term though.

 

[Toastie]

Manchester Uni has a long history of technological excellence, Graphene being their latest I’m lead to believe?

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) recently sold their Crewe campus and it‘s being set up as a cutting edge medical training facility. Big Asian cash apparently so it’s not all a one way street.

September at Manchester Airport is an education too. Every Uni in the North West has an essentially permanent Meet ‘n’ Greet presence there for a fortnight or so as thousands of Far Eastern students ship in for the start of their courses. We may not export locomotives any more but we sure as hell export tertiary education. STEM courses at MU are as competitive as Oxbridge.

The sadness is they seem to take those new found skills home and go about tearing the arse out of the U.K. production base.

 

[cowgoesmoo]

If you actually read the Kerslaw reports you will see that initally London was chosen as the most favoured recipient of central govt investment. The hope was that this would create a trickle down effect to that would help out other regions.
This did not happen, but the continued tax payer funded investment in London did, and to the detriment of other regions. If you go back not long before the 80's you'll find that London wasn't the golden calf that fed the countries finances, but the industrial midlands and upwards were.
It was only since the de-industrialisation in the 80's (and there were many reasons why this was inevitable) that London began to turn into what it is today.
It's not about Thatcher as politicians of every hue decided that London was the way to go. Just ook at how Labour has switched its focus from the working class to minorities and other urban based groups.
Yes, London is sucessful now, but it is (largely) at the cost to other regions, and this was done in no small amount via the spending of public finances in a whole swathes of areas such as transport, the arts and public facilities.
Your answer does seem to be made soly of 'keep govt spending in London as I live here and it's nice and the rest of you will just have to visit, and oh, btw, keep paying for this for me please'.
It's not about blaming Thatcher (she did what was needed to be done), but that lack of almost any kind of investment for the north over many different govts. They simply didn't 'get it'.

I live in the north again now. More that money raised in London needs to stay in the SE and be reinvested in improving the place for those who live there and actually pay the bills for the UK. Why take away money from the SE that could be used to provide a positive return to waste on some vanity project in the north that has little return and does nothing more than virtue signal. People want to fly from Heathrow, not Doncaster (as mentioned earlier) so why waste money upgrading Doncaster airport over building an additional runway at LHR?

 

[endure]

The lads in Crewe will be pleased. Most of Crewe works is now housing with Bombardier having a tiny maintenance presence. The biggest set up now is LNER which Pete Waterman set up IIRC as a bit of a hobby. “Biggest” is a relative term though.

I suspect they chose Derby as their main base because of the facilities that it offered.

Not only were there two huge separate manufacturing sites (the Loco works and Carriage and Wagon) but it was also the home of the Railway Technical Centre that started doing theoretical aviation-type research rather than the more traditional research that the railways were used to.

It was the Technical Centre that designed the APT.

 

[endure]

I live in the north again now. More that money raised in London needs to stay in the SE and be reinvested in improving the place for those who live there and actually pay the bills for the UK. Why take away money from the SE that could be used to provide a positive return to waste on some vanity project in the north that has little return and does nothing more than virtue signal. People want to fly from Heathrow, not Doncaster (as mentioned earlier) so why waste money upgrading Doncaster airport over building an additional runway at LHR?

People certainly don't want to fly from Heathrow unless it happens to be nearby. Why would someone who lives in Newcastle want to travel the LHR when they can fly from Newcastle Airport?

The reason that money ought to be spent in Doncaster (not necessarily the airport but in places where it will do good) is because people in Doncaster and elsewhere in the Midlands and North have a vote too as Boris found out in 2019. If we don't see at least some effort to level up Boris may very well see those votes disappearing over the horizon again.

 

[Themanwho]

I'm paid for 20 hours a week. The laptop and phone are switched on only during those 20 hours. Anyone who does more than they are paid for is a mug.

You mean you're not salaried?

My God. Standards have dropped on Arrse...

 

[cowgoesmoo]

People certainly don't want to fly from Heathrow unless it happens to be nearby. Why would someone who lives in Newcastle want to travel the LHR when they can fly from Newcastle Airport?

The reason that money ought to be spent in Doncaster (not necessarily the airport but in places where it will do good) is because people in Doncaster and elsewhere in the Midlands and North have a vote too as Boris found out in 2019. If we don't see at least some effort to level up Boris may very well see those votes disappearing over the horizon again.

Just because you have a vote doesnt mean you're entitled to have everyone else subsidise your stuff - if it was financially viable to have an upgrade to Doncaster airport for example it would have been done by now by a private company who would be happy to take the profit. Why should the rest of the UK subsidise it by providing an airport close by so the locals aren't inconvenienced having to travel to an airport? Why is it ok to spend taxpayers money on a loss-making scheme in the north but not in a profitable scheme in the SE??

 

[Civvy Scum]

You mean you're not salaried?

My God. Standards have dropped on Arrse...

Of course I'm salaried. And contracted to do 20 hours. Not 21 or 30.

 

[Civvy Scum]

Just because you have a vote doesnt mean you're entitled to have everyone else subsidise your stuff - if it was financially viable to have an upgrade to Doncaster airport for example it would have been done by now by a private company who would be happy to take the profit. Why should the rest of the UK subsidise it by providing an airport close by so the locals aren't inconvenienced having to travel to an airport? Why is it ok to spend taxpayers money on a loss-making scheme in the north but not in a profitable scheme in the SE??

The airport doesn't need upgrading. The links to it do but not by that much, at least initially. There's plenty of spare capacity at it. If more flights operated from it, people wouldn't have to travel to Heathrow and the like, adding to congestion on trains and roads darn sarf. Then southerners would find their infrastructure less rammed.

 

[endure]

Just because you have a vote doesnt mean you're entitled to have everyone else subsidise your stuff - if it was financially viable to have an upgrade to Doncaster airport for example it would have been done by now by a private company who would be happy to take the profit. Why should the rest of the UK subsidise it by providing an airport close by so the locals aren't inconvenienced having to travel to an airport? Why is it ok to spend taxpayers money on a loss-making scheme in the north but not in a profitable scheme in the SE??

You appear to have missed this bit

"The reason that money ought to be spent in Doncaster (not necessarily the airport but in places where it will do good)"

 

[cowgoesmoo]

You appear to have missed this bit

"The reason that money ought to be spent in Doncaster (not necessarily the airport but in places where it will do good)"

Exactly - like the SE, hence the reason the majority of the spending is there at the moment! If it was a viable project it would get funding under the current scheme - all the changes are doing is providing an excuse to bribe voters to vote for Boris by spending public money on unviable vanity projects. I believe the americans call it pork-barrel politics.

 

[endure]

Exactly - like the SE, hence the reason the majority of the spending is there at the moment! If it was a viable project it would get funding under the current scheme - all the changes are doing is providing an excuse to bribe voters to vote for Boris by spending public money on unviable vanity projects. I believe the americans call it pork-barrel politics.

Others call it 'pull up the ladder Jack, I'm in the lifeboat'.

 

[Turret_Monster]

I'm going to take the opposing position. And for the record I was born in the north and lived/worked in the south for years.

London's probably one of the most successful and richest places on the planet, it's only rival on the global scale is New York. The only part of the UK that actually has a net contribution to the countries finances. Why take this money away and spend even more taxpayer money on useless vanity projects in the north that will have little benefit? London has been successful due to the entrepreneurial mindset and the willing to graft hard, not by sitting around blaming Thatcher for the last 40 years. Just like south Wales there is an atmosphere up here of blaming London and the SE for the regions own failings in adapting to the changing world. Manufacturing has gone. Heavy industry has gone. Mining has gone. Man up and start paying your own way instead of trying to live off of subsidies from the productive and profitable SE.

Which is fine, except that there’s quite a lot of hard graft goes on in t’ North too but for some reason ‘successful’ southerners seem to think we should all have to work even harder just to get to and from the workhouse.

 

[cowgoesmoo]

Others call it 'pull up the ladder Jack, I'm in the lifeboat'.

More like being proactive by getting into the lifeboat when trouble arrived rather than standing on deck like a little lost sheep waiting to be told which one to get in and when while the ship sinks round you.