Why Northern England is poor • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#161

Post by arpinum » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

desas wrote: post #152

arpinum wrote: post #143

I'd put less blame on London and more on secondary cities than the author does because he misses an important point: London is the only UK city that tolerates growth. The UK system heavily centralised in tax-and-spend powers, but heavily decentralised in veto powers. Secondary cities have used their veto powers to either stop development or make it so expensive that very little gets developed. City centres are not be…

> I'd put less blame on London and more on secondary cities > HS2 is cut short because of money that people outside of London demand be spent on making it so expensive on a per-mile basis. I'm not sure that's accurate. Cost overruns have also come from inability to find efficiencies, high inflation in the construction sector, low contingency estimate (half cross rails) and a misunderstanding of ground conditions. The…

> expense increases due to consultation / public demand have come from demands made on the route between London and Birmingham.

I'm pointing out the problems in the whole country outside London, not just the north. So this includes the demand for 100km of unnecessary tunnels. Tunnels that the create higher risk and uncertainty.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#162

Post by thomasforth » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 12:19 AM UTC

arpinum wrote: post #143

I'd put less blame on London and more on secondary cities than the author does because he misses an important point: London is the only UK city that tolerates growth. The UK system heavily centralised in tax-and-spend powers, but heavily decentralised in veto powers. Secondary cities have used their veto powers to either stop development or make it so expensive that very little gets developed. City centres are not be…

I don't think this is right. Secondary cities in Britain are consistently more positive about development than London. I give the example in the piece of Leeds voting to expand its airport and how this was blocked by the UK government. In London it is the UK government trying to force that city to expand Heathrow after London itself rejected it.

The best data I can suggest to try and convince yourself of this is from a fantastic London Centric article on approving 5G masts. This is just one example of how open cities are to growth, but the results are really clear --- "The end result is that in London it is uniquely hard to get permission for new equipment. According to Mobile UK’s internal data in Greater Manchester, Leeds, and Edinburgh more than 80% of requests for new masts are approved at the planning stage. In Greater London this approval rate plummets to less than 40%, one of the worst in the country."

https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-exactly-is-londons-pho...

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#163

Post by graemep » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 8:33 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #135

graemep wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That includes services, and reflects success of polices in attracting inward investment. You cannot have it both ways: capital account + current account + changes in foreign currency holdings have to balance, and the last is small comparatively.

Re: Why Northern England is poor

#164

Post by growse » Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 2:02 PM UTC

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #153

growse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a chemistry degree and an entire career doing software / system engineering in financial services. I've also hired a boatload of people with STEM degrees. In fact (massive generalisation warning) I prefer hiring them to those with computer science degrees.

How does one pivot into finance with a stem degree and computer engineering experience? What are you looking for in a resume and what's the interview process like?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "finance". I'm talking specifically about technology & engineering in financial services.

But mostly, in a resume, I'm looking for 1) evidence of competence (do you know what software is and how to make it), 2) evidence of interest in the domain and 3) evidence of being able to communicate with others.

Everything else specialist can be taught / learned. You don't need to know either how to balance a tree, or how to calculate the value of an IR swap.