Abandon The North!

[Rob McCow]

Just as I was starting to think that insular, lunatic fascists had all been purged!

From the Independent, but this story has been in all the papers:

Struggling northern cities will never be able to regenerate and should be given up, a Tory think-tank with close links to David Cameron concludes today.

Residents of cities such as Liverpool, Bradford and Sunderland should be encouraged to move to the more prosperous South-east, it says. A future government should build three million homes in and around London, Cambridge and Oxford to prompt Britain's biggest mass internal migration since the 19th century.

The call from Policy Exchange will be a huge embarrassment to the Tory leader as he heads to north-west England today to campaign in marginal seats. Policy Exchange was founded by Michael Gove, the Tory education spokesman. Its policy director is Anthony Browne who is about to begin working for Boris Johnson and is tipped for a role at No 10 if the Tories win the next election.

In a statement last night, the Conservatives said the report did not reflect party policy, adding that they wholeheartedly supported the regeneration of northern cities.

In its report, the think-tank said: "We need to accept above all that we cannot guarantee to regenerate every town and every city in Britain that has fallen behind. Just as we can't buck the market, so we can't buck economic geography either."

Policy Exchange said many large coastal cities had lost their raison d'etre with the decline of shipping and raised the alarm over the future of Liverpool, Sunderland, Hull, Scunthorpe and Blackpool. It said it was unrealistic to expect the prosperous cities of Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle to regenerate less well-off neighbours such as Liverpool, Rochdale, Bradford and Sunderland. It said such places were not "doomed" and could not be abandoned, but people had to face up to the fact that they had "little prospect of offering their residents the standard of living to which they aspire". The think-tank said all three million new homes earmarked for England by 2020 should be built in the South-east, making it easier for people in less well-off areas to move. It also called for massive building in Oxford and Cambridge, taking advantage of their high skills base and favourable location.

Tim Leunig, a co-author of the report, said: "No doubt some people will claim these proposals are unworkable, unreasonable and perhaps plain barmy. But the issue is clear: current regeneration policies are failing the very people they are supposed to be helping and there is no evidence that the trend will be reversed without radical changes. Internal migration has always been an important part of a dynamic economy."

A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said it totally disagreed with its conclusions.

Warren Bradley, leader of Liverpool City Council, said: "The past decade has seen unprecedented growth in Liverpool's economy, which has surpassed many southern towns and cities."

Come on you lot, get your bags packed. And remember it's 'Baaarrrth' not 'Baeth' if you want to survive down here.

[shada pavlova]

Struggling northern cities will never be able to regenerate.

They need a metamorphic symbiosis generator!

[WhiteCrow]

I came from the North originally and had to migrate down here because simply in IT all the jobs were based in the South. There has been a huge trend in the last 5 years of jobs migrating North, where costs are all cheaper for employee and employer, and I have to admit I'm hoping to eventually return to my beloved North.

[Si Hunt]

A future government should build three million homes in and around London, Cambridge and Oxford

Yes, I'm sure we could pop them in at the bottom of existing houses gardens or on street corners.

Si.

[Paul Monk]

Its just nonsense. The south east is over crowded, vastly expensive with water and electricity systems that barely cope as it is. As Mike says a lot of companies are moving up North because its cheaper. And many IT jobs can be done remotely now.
Building more housing for these migrants would be silly because they couldn't afford to buy them anyway and most couldn't be built without destroying the green belt which would then make the south east a huge urban sprawl with all the problems of a huge city. Plus I'm not seeing thousand and thousands of jobs in desperate need to be filled down here either. As for quality of life, I live between an airport and a huge motorway so how is making the south east more populated going to help with quality of life?
Plus there are some jobs (ones with national pay scales, teachers nurses etc) where you're better off living up North. At least the tories are distancing themselves from this crazy notion.

No offence to northerners but if they all move down here I moving up north for some peace and quiet and a better quality of life.

[Kaybee Bailey]

Well, the north will probably by laughing in forty years time when the homes of all the people in this thinktank are underwater...

[WhiteCrow]

Everyone knows the UK economy is going to collapse, and we're all going to have to become migrants to Poland to make ends meet ...

[Rob McCow]

Quite right Mike! We should all start migrating south-east, but let's not stop at Dover. How does Hungary sound?

[Dirk Gently]

Sounds like you need somethng to eat.

[Captain Tancredi]

One of the most depressing things about going down to London on the train is the moment somewhere around Hatfield where the view just becomes wave after wave of houses, and you know that it more or less continues on to the south coast.

I grew up in Birkenhead, a middle-sized Northern town based on shipbuilding, which pretty much died with the Cold War because the main shipyard did a lot of naval work. Bits and pieces of maintenance still go on, but for the main part the town is there because it's there- we don't really make anything much on the Wirral apart from Cadbury's chocolate biscuits and Vauxhall cars- and you can have a better standard of living for the same length of commute than living in Liverpool, which was the main reason why my folks moved over the water in the first place.

Then again, having lived and worked in and around Leeds for twelve years now (crikey!) you can't separate booming cities from their down-at-heel neighbours. A lot of my colleagues live in the old woollen towns like Huddersfield and Dewsbury, or in the former mining area round Castleford and Pontefract, because good quality houses are cheaper there and it's still only 20 minutes by train from Leeds city centre. I can see that on the scale of the global economy there's no sense in maintaining a town based on an industry which no longer exists (and my folks might be glad to be moved out of a house which was valued at around £50,000 a couple of years ago) but I don't think that adding them on to the vast blot in the south-east (the featureless hinterland rather than London itself) is going to help.

[WhiteCrow]

I grew up in Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a place for delluded people who don't want to think they live on Merseyside. So says my wife.

[cullsoft]

Building more housing for these migrants would be silly because they couldn't afford to buy them anyway and most couldn't be built without destroying the green belt which would then make the south east a huge urban sprawl with all the problems of a huge city.

I smell the start of the entire south of England being turned into Central City...

[Captain Tancredi]

Birkenhead is a place for delluded people who don't want to think they live on Merseyside. So says my wife.

I shall tell my parents that- they're the ones who moved and I was born three years afterwards, so I didn't have much choice.

[Pip Madeley]

What a load of bollocks. Manchester's a prime example of a city that's regenerated successfully.

And it's "baff", not "baeth"

[Jamie McCrimmon]

What a load of bollocks.

Pip sums it up beautifully.

[Pip Madeley]

You can see why they dearly missed me on that English degree course.

[Rob McCow]

And it's "baff", not "baeth"

Don't try that Geordie barbarian Pagan witchcraft on me, filthy Northern peasant! I'll have your hide...

[Jamie McCrimmon]

I wonder what the plans are for the North, once we've all been evacuated to the Saarf of England to live in overcrowded flats to take our chances with knife crime on the streets? Perhaps it will be quarried, covered in nuclear power stations, or just eradicated? Politicians whinge about voter apathy, but it's because politicians have their heads so far up their arses that they are incapable of talking anything other than a load of crap.

[Paul Monk]

All us lot that live down here will move up north and enjoy the peace and quiet, countryside, cheaper housing and lower cost of living well away from the 300 ever expnading motorways and airports.

[Wayne]

I wasn't even gonna grace this thread with a reply because i've never read such a load of absolute knackers.
Tory think-tank, My arse! They couldn't think their way out of a room with an open door.

[Paul Monk]

Nicely said Wayne. Its complete balls.

[WhiteCrow]

Tory think-tank, My arse! They couldn't think their way out of a room with an open door.

Maybe they reason the Conservatives never have a chance in such Labour heartlands, therefore the plan is to decimate those areas when they come to power.

[Paul Monk]

Maybe I've been thinking about Judge Dredd too much lately, but this does have the whiff of Mega City One about it.

[WhiteCrow]

Maybe I've been thinking about Judge Dredd too much lately, but this does have the whiff of Mega City One about it.

What is the Tory policy on Fatties ... I mean obesity?

[Jamie McCrimmon]

Make them live up north, where they can eat themselves to death with Greggs pasties?