Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Northern England is poor

tomforth.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 164 posts

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#131

Post by graemep »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #27
EarlKing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a consequence of companies outsourcing to countries where they can get away with slave labor and a complete lack of environmental regulation. There's nothing natural about it.

It's basically a modern form of economic colonialism replacing the old style of colonialism with ships, guns and slaves in chains. The brutal hard work gets done off-shore for poor pay and the spoils(profits) get shipped to the western finance capitals of the world where people who put in little effort get the cream. It's still dependent on rich countries having historical leverage (economic, political and especially…

Not true. Those countries have become a lot richer. The transformation in standards of living since the 80s has been spectacular in many countries. The biggest drag on that has been the profits being taken by the wealthy in those countries. The west does not have he position it used to. There are a lot of British workers working for Indian capitalists. China's manufacturing is mostly Chinese owned. In a lot of other places the forreign ownership is Asian, not western. The west no longer dominates the world although westerners have been slow to bting themselves to acknowledge this.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#132

Post by desas »

mikhailfranco wrote: post #123

The boundary between his North and South roughly follows the Roman Fosse Way from Lincoln to Exeter. The 'ditch' ( fosse ) and road marked the border of the initial phase of the Roman invasion after 43 AD. It was a military road for rapid deployment of forces from the legionary bases to defend border incursions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosse_Way Apart from the Fosse Way, almost all other major Roman roads fanne…

> the boundaries of the original private railway companies (GWR, LNER, LMS, SR)

Minor point, though maybe less minor in context of the original post. They are not the original private railway companies. They are the companies created in the 1920s by the London government as it forced railway companies together after it had took them under state control during ww1.

The original private railway companies were originally primarily northern companies, some of who eventually developed mainlines to the rich south eastern markets.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#134

Post by tiew9Vii »

thomasforth wrote: post #130
tiew9Vii wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born and bred in Tameside. It's a 15 minute train ride to Manchester. 30-40 min drive/bus trip to Manchester, 1 hour train ride to Leeds and slightly longer drive. Generally Tameside is well serviced, you got all the amenities you would expect and location wise you have very good access for commuting. Manchester, Salford, Leeds university all easily accessible. Tamesides location makes it popular as a commuter…

"It's funny reading these articles from people who haven't grew up poor, in the north, never seen a council estate, or the way of life". I didn't grow up poor, but I did grow up in the North, went to the local comprehensive, and have lived on plenty of council estates. When I lived in Manchester I went to Ashton plenty of times, it's not that different to Hull.

It's not to different from a lot of working class towns world over with social economic issues from my travels. Nothing to do with 1066 and I'd say a lot of other points in the article.

I'm not in the UK anymore and been watching a UK YouTuber going around old towns https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingturnip/videos, some themes are not to different from a US YouTuber I watch going around US towns https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello/videos

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#135

Post by tonyedgecombe »

graemep wrote: post #45
EarlKing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a consequence of companies outsourcing to countries where they can get away with slave labor and a complete lack of environmental regulation. There's nothing natural about it.

Its not that simple. The UK experts a lot of manufactured goods to exactly those sorts of countries, and imports a lot from the EU and the US. What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers... Its othe…

We have been running a negative current account balance for decades now.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpay...

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#136

Post by arpinum »

thomasforth wrote: post #108
tom_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The diagram of the northern "urban" centre also fails to point out the Peak District, though you can detect it by noticing what looks like an obvious gap in the middle of the circle. In the middle of the London circle is, of course, the centre of London, world-famous capital city of the United Kingdom, seat of power of its government and monarchy. In the middle of the Northern circle? Some mountains and the occasiona…

In my comparisons with the Netherlands I explore this in detail. The centre of the Netherlands' main urban region is a six metre below sea level swamp that the Dutch never have and never will build on and which is just as much of an obstacle to agglomeration as the Pennines. So I really don't think this matters. As for the weather, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Denmark are hardly renowned for their…

Factor in the ability to escape bad weather, much easier to do in UK than Denmark .

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#137

Post by spratzt »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #63
tetris11 wrote: post #3

We also shifted largely into a service based economy, shutdown a lot of mines and mills (for better or for worse) which were primarily more north based. More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking, as there was no relevant industry to pick them up... and as someone with several postdoctoral degrees, yet no house or meaningful assets... who could blame them for going into banking in this…

> More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking This is why I advise people to never study physical sciences or non-software engineering. There just aren’t many jobs for it in the UK. And even fewer that pay well.

Unfortunately in 2025 you can probably add software engineering to the list of degrees to avoid.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#138

Post by tonyedgecombe »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #7

Lot's of coal mining, used for steel production, used for boat building ... The high paying jobs are centered around London and the financial industry (20% of UK GDP), although post-Brexit the whole country is not doing well. Glad I left in the late 80's.

>Lot's of coal mining

Coal mining used to employee over a million people[1] at the start of the last century. It's effectively zero now.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/371069/employment-in-coa...

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#139

Post by tonyedgecombe »

matt-p wrote: post #69
dambi0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. If we look at the idea of subsides between region, and we accept that this the right way of thinking about it and assume it's factual and that simple. Then I think one of the questions worth asking is effectively do we want to try reduce that inequality or do we want to perpetuate it. Neither is obviously right or wrong, but I think that's the core question. If we are believe to the idea in the article t…

I think most people would agree that some imbalance is natural, perhaps even good but the current level is bad. Bad, that the only net positive part of the entire UK comes from London and it's dependent, the SE. It's clearly caused societal issues and apart from everything else means we're putting all our eggs in one basket. Transporting goods, energy and people into London from all over the UK is clearly worse than…

I'm not even sure it's that great for Londoners. What's the point of a six figure salary if it gets swallowed up buying a tiny terraced house or a flat too small for a family.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#140

Post by failedartifact »

spratzt wrote: post #137
spacebanana7 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking This is why I advise people to never study physical sciences or non-software engineering. There just aren’t many jobs for it in the UK. And even fewer that pay well.

Unfortunately in 2025 you can probably add software engineering to the list of degrees to avoid.

Only because there are too many software engineers, not the fact that AI will replace those jobs. Experienced software engineers are still required for successful businesses.
Post reply on HN