How do you solve the North/South divide?

[jbi]

Use Psychology said:

someone's nicked the wheels off all those cars.

council wants to put of traffic lights as the RNLI is so sick of rescuing people off the causeway.

Locals like watching tourists get wet, and don't want them installed

[plasticpig]

The simplest solution is to enable taxes to be set at a regional level. You can either increase tax levels in the regions to the point that they become net contributors or set corporation and income taxes at lower levels to encourage investment into the region.

[ukwill]

RYH64E said:

London and the South East should declare independence and form a new country, a bit like Monaco. We could let enough Northerners in to carry out the various menial tasks that need doing, but under no circumstances should we let the Welsh in.

[Mark Benson]

Blib said:

The regions need tax raising powers and, just as important, if not more so, tax cutting powers.. only rhen will they experience growth without government meddling.

But that's my point, it's 20+ years too late just to cut taxes locally and hope. The areas concerned would, in the short term lose income as the tax take was lower in the hope that some SE businesses relocated - but how long would that take, would enough businesses be able to uproot their employees from their homes and families in the SE to make it viable etc. etc.

You could cut taxes on new development or newly arrived industry, but there's a bigger hurdle IMO;

Some regions in the north rely almost completely on government money, one way or another - there's also a mentality among many, not helped by the amount of public money that's been pumped into the areas recently, that the solution comes from the pocket of the taxpayer, when in reality salvation and commercial success comes from the pockets of the consumers and customers - just ask Greggs for instance, a north-east success story.
We have to wean people off public money and instill back into them the kind of spirit of enterprise their forefathers had, when Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool were the factories of the empire - industry that's all but gone but many still hark back to it - there's a real romance for the 'old days' where a man would go off and do manly things, coming home at the end of a day with the money to feed his family. We (the north) have still to accept those days are over and the future is in life sciences, technology etc. - not as 'manly', but it's where the north could shine if it chose to.

It's partly an attitude thing, partly because, like a spoiled child the north has not had to make it's own way in the world and has lost the ability to do so. It'll need a lot of time and money to reverse the trend, and a lot of upheaval - anyone doing so would be seen as the enemy just as Maggie was - there's no-one in politics willing to take it on now, or I suspect for the foreseeable future,


And point taken on the parochialism, but I think we're arriving at the same conclusion from different directions on that one, so I won't labour it.

[ukwill]

Use Psychology said:

rotate the UK by 90 degrees.

[jshell]

ukwill said:

Use Psychology said:

rotate the UK by 90 degrees.

It used to be:

[KaraK]

jshell said:

ukwill said:

Use Psychology said:

rotate the UK by 90 degrees.

It used to be:

I am I the only one that sees that as a person (the mainland) lying down swigging from a bottle (Ireland)?

Just me then

[AJS-]

The Don of Croy said:

As a soft southern bar steward, I'd say the only answer lies in the North...it's up to them.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, t'North was full of enterprising mill owners just gagging to out-stately-home their neighbour, or construct an even bigger dark satanic mill, largely based around Northern finance and ingenuity. These industries were created, no blueprints, and lead the World.

Where has this mindset gone? Mind you, they've still got JCB...

It got nationalised, run down, sold off and ultimately destroyed, which is a well worn path for many things in the north.

This is the sad thing.

I don't do the whole flat cap, pigeon keeping northern thing, and definitely not the bhing about the economic malaise of the north since Thatcher. Because it's not her fault, just as it wasn't the government of the times' doing that the north boomed.

I grew up in the shadow of Cragside, Lord Armstrong's estate that he built, complete with his own lake, forest and hydro-electric plant in 18-something or another. And although socialists may say he did this on the back of exploiting workers (and they'd probably say selling deadly weapons too, but that part is true) he also built streets of houses for workers and retired workers, schools and hospitals, employed thousands of people.

But that is a part of the difficulty. London is a cut and thrust big city, a trading centre full of chancers, barrow boys and immigrants (no offence intended, really) making quick fortunes. The north was developed by brilliant industrialists, who built whole towns and tempted agricultural workers into the modern world, not with the chance of a quick fortune, but the opportunity of an improved standard of living in exchange for hard work. It created a dependency that was useful in the 19th century, but when it underwent the nationalise, run down and destroy treatment under government ownership, it left a lot of people high and dry. People whose wellbeing had been provided for by their employer one way or another since the industrial revolution.

The village I grew up in is a microcosm of this. 100 years ago it had everything - a school, a hospital, a railway line, thriving farms and all the trappings of a busy little town. Each of these have suffered the same fate. Nationalised, run down and then closed.

Of course people need to adapt, and the government can't help with this too much, but by stepping into the mighty shoes left by those great industrialists and then failing so miserably to fill them, they can certainly hinder the process. Keeping coal mines open decades beyond their useful life, promising full employment, a decent wage, and a million other things that they can not hope to deliver, all only conspired to make the adaptation more urgent and more painful for the very people it claimed to be protecting.

The only thing wrong with the north is that it's still in the grip of these policies which have spent so long spectacularly failing to deliver, and the only answer that anyone can come up with is to do more of them.

[Blib]

Mark Benson said:

But that's my point, it's 20+ years too late just to cut taxes locally and hope. The areas concerned would, in the short term lose income as the tax take was lower in the hope that some SE businesses relocated - but how long would that take, would enough businesses be able to uproot their employees from their homes and families in the SE to make it viable etc. etc.

You could cut taxes on new development or newly arrived industry, but there's a bigger hurdle IMO;

Some regions in the north rely almost completely on government money, one way or another - there's also a mentality among many, not helped by the amount of public money that's been pumped into the areas recently, that the solution comes from the pocket of the taxpayer, when in reality salvation and commercial success comes from the pockets of the consumers and customers - just ask Greggs for instance, a north-east success story.
We have to wean people off public money and instill back into them the kind of spirit of enterprise their forefathers had, when Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool were the factories of the empire - industry that's all but gone but many still hark back to it - there's a real romance for the 'old days' where a man would go off and do manly things, coming home at the end of a day with the money to feed his family. We (the north) have still to accept those days are over and the future is in life sciences, technology etc. - not as 'manly', but it's where the north could shine if it chose to.

It's partly an attitude thing, partly because, like a spoiled child the north has not had to make it's own way in the world and has lost the ability to do so. It'll need a lot of time and money to reverse the trend, and a lot of upheaval - anyone doing so would be seen as the enemy just as Maggie was - there's no-one in politics willing to take it on now, or I suspect for the foreseeable future,


And point taken on the parochialism, but I think we're arriving at the same conclusion from different directions on that one, so I won't labour it.

That's precisely why i ended my first post with the sentence, "Ergo, you're stuffed". Or somesuch.

[AJS-]

Mark Benson said:

But that's my point, it's 20+ years too late just to cut taxes locally and hope. The areas concerned would, in the short term lose income as the tax take was lower in the hope that some SE businesses relocated - but how long would that take, would enough businesses be able to uproot their employees from their homes and families in the SE to make it viable etc. etc.

It's not only about relocating businesses from the south east, it's about stimulating new ventures, and allowing a certain region to gain some sort of competitive advantage.

[Digga]

AJS- said:

It's not only about relocating businesses from the south east, it's about stimulating new ventures, and allowing a certain region to gain some sort of competitive advantage.

Stimulating new business is easy. Simply look at all the things - employment laws, complexity of tax legislation - that might prevent the simplest business (and business person) from being able to operate easily. if you solve this, all the established businesses (small and large) will also benefit greatly.

Unburden enterprise from bureaucracy and free them up to 'do' - create stuff, provide services, generate revenues and profit - and the benefits ought to be obvious.

[AJS-]

Digga said:

AJS- said:

It's not only about relocating businesses from the south east, it's about stimulating new ventures, and allowing a certain region to gain some sort of competitive advantage.

Stimulating new business is easy. Simply look at all the things - employment laws, complexity of tax legislation - that might prevent the simplest business (and business person) from being able to operate easily. if you solve this, all the established businesses (small and large) will also benefit greatly.

Unburden enterprise from bureaucracy and free them up to 'do' - create stuff, provide services, generate revenues and profit - and the benefits ought to be obvious.

That's my point. Allow this to be done on a county level and it would allow the north to regenerate quicker.

[Digga]

AJS- said:

Digga said:

AJS- said:

It's not only about relocating businesses from the south east, it's about stimulating new ventures, and allowing a certain region to gain some sort of competitive advantage.

Stimulating new business is easy. Simply look at all the things - employment laws, complexity of tax legislation - that might prevent the simplest business (and business person) from being able to operate easily. if you solve this, all the established businesses (small and large) will also benefit greatly.

Unburden enterprise from bureaucracy and free them up to 'do' - create stuff, provide services, generate revenues and profit - and the benefits ought to be obvious.

That's my point. Allow this to be done on a county level and it would allow the north to regenerate quicker.

Why let the North have all the fun. Really?

The legislative burden is a brake on business everywhere. Furthermore, apropos of the 'cash in hand' thread, the reason there is so much fiddling is:

1. Taxes/tax thresholds are high
2. Doing it the 'right' way is not the work of a moment and (as a huge generalisation), the smaller the business the less able the entrepreneur to fill in forms
3. Even if you do things right, HMRC is wont to drop on you like ten tonnes of excrement
4. Working out tax for an employee...

[martin84]

Digga said:

Pretty good points.

I'd say the last government's "don't worry about industry, the financial sector is where it's at" approach was staggeringly idiotic. Sadly, yet again, we find ourselves saddled with a government that niether knows nor cares about the 'real' private sector.

I was reading the other day how 1 in 7 MP's have never had a job outside politics, meaning 90 members of the house have only known education and politics. 30 years ago there were only 20 of that ilk. I don't think industry is completely gone from the UK, you often hear how we supposedly don't make anything anymore but we're a bigger manufacturing country than most realise. The previous Government's obsession with kissing up to the City - who later brought it crashing down round their ears - was quite tragic but I think it goes further than that.

For decades now every school student has been told if they want to achieve anything they have to go to University, they've been told a 'good job' is one behind a desk and that goes back before the New Labour years. Although Tony Blair's 'half of school leavers should go to Uni!!' thing has led to a devaluation of qualifications.

Digga said:

The response that people can help themselves is not wrong

You're right it's not but the simplistic idea of pull all the benefits and scrap all the tax in the north will not achieve much.

[retrorider]

johnfm said:

Let's presume that The north ( and Wales) has been in recession for probably 20+ years.

This is a 'guesstimate' predicated on the fact that the SE has been massively booming for about that time, and overall UK output has exactly been stellar.

Assuming this blanket approach is right, what stimuli can transform the North, Wales, etc from net beneficiaries to net contributors?


-10 points for any mention of Thatcher or miners strikes, btw.

Forward thinking responses please.

Leave as is i say and let the aspirational middle class get on with it in the S/E...

[New POD]

JB! said:

I'm from MK, just about the limits of "South East" (40min/1hr from London) and work up in Derby.

It's damn cheap up here!!!! I looked at getting somewhere in north Lincs, and pretty much wet myself as to how much further my money went.

Downside? Living in the Midlands/North.

I'm working in Derby too and commuting from Merseyside.

You can definately get a decent house for nothing in a nice area. and you have the Derby Dales and Peak District (with the best outdoor climbing in the world) on your door step.

[Blib]

I have to admit that when Mrs Blib retires, London won't see us for dust. We're off to live in deepest Suffolk. Though, we'll keep a pied-a-terre down here in The Smoke.

[anonymous-user]

To easy. Londons wealth comes from the City alone. So put in a 400mph bullet train from the capital of the North (Newcastle) to London where everyone can access the City jobs.

The alternative is Northerners will keep coming down south.

First we drink your beer, then we shag your women (yes, yours - I've had her), then we put our superior work ethic to use, then we out earn you, then we out bid you for houses, then when we've bilked you senseless we retire back up North with pots of gold.

[AJS-]

Digga said:

Why let the North have all the fun. Really?

The legislative burden is a brake on business everywhere. Furthermore, apropos of the 'cash in hand' thread, the reason there is so much fiddling is:

1. Taxes/tax thresholds are high
2. Doing it the 'right' way is not the work of a moment and (as a huge generalisation), the smaller the business the less able the entrepreneur to fill in forms
3. Even if you do things right, HMRC is wont to drop on you like ten tonnes of excrement
4. Working out tax for an employee...

Do it at local level across the country. Counties seem like as good a place as any to start. Devolve all tax and spending powers to county level.

[Digga]

TopOnePercent said:

First we drink your beer, then we shag your women (yes, yours - I've had her), then we put our superior work ethic to use, then we out earn you, then we out bid you for houses, then when we've bilked you senseless we retire back up North with pots of gold.

My mother used to reckon the Viking genes were never far from the surface up north - visible in a good many individuals. (I think she used that to explain away my behaviour as a child.)