Saw the headline and thought "well, it won't give the real reason: because London". But refreshingly, it does.
Dutch disease sums it up.
Why Northern England is poor
141–150 of 164 posts
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#142[dead]
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#143I'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 being built up to concentrate talent, and I wouldn't blame London or lack of public money. Housing and rents are high enough to justify private spending on concentrated development if not for the regulatory burdens and delays.
The author points out Leeds and Manchester having no metro system that exists in other similarly sized cities. But how much of a useful metro system could Leeds build given the same money spent by Toulouse or Lyon? My guess is none, the money would be consumed by lawsuits and addressing local veto owner concerns.
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. If the line were developed similar to other lines in Europe there would be money available for the full length.
I'm somewhat bullish on Manchester in the long run, they may emerge as a second city that tolerates growth. If they develop enough to become an affordable and large city then they will attract a lot of businesses who would otherwise be in London.
In my city we have a "housing crisis" while the city council owns large empty lots in the city centre from torn down or empty buildings. They have been waiting 8 years on handouts from London to afford to develop it themselves, spending £15m so far without a single unit built. It could be sold to developers and fixed council finances, but there is such a strong aversion to allowing a private company make a profit. The council actually has assets to develop the sites, but has preferred to pursue handouts instead of spending their own money.
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#144Brings back to mind KLF - It's Grim Up North : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XLWEjN9eI
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
To a certain extent, would making the productive parts of manchester, even just 2X more productive not fix this over time in the same way that it has in London? If you look back even say 30 years ago in London, you'd of said the same thing about places like Hackney, as you do now about Tameside. Today it houses some of the most desired and valuable real estate not only in London, and by extension the UK, but in the w…
> 30 years ago in London, you'd of said the same thing about places like Hackney...[and] today it houses some of the most desired and valuable real estate are you saying that gentrification of Hackney did not simply entail wealthier people moving in and displacing the local population, but rather soaring incomes for the people who lived there?
I find this a strange reasoning. When a city becomes more economically viable everyone benefits.
The poor people in Amsterdam get benefits paid for by the rich.
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#146The author says that the region is poor because, after the decline of industry, it didn’t have universities to drive tech, finance and services. But it sounds like the problem is simply deindustrialization in the first place, same as the US Rust Belt. Material wealth means having stuff. You can only get stuff by making it or taking it from the earth. Meanwhile Chinese cities are sparkling and new, and their workers e…
Deindustrialization happened all across Europe.
Some countries got over it and found new ways to make money. Besides you can make money with trading stuff... Anything that is sold in central Europe has to pass through the port of Rotterdam.
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree, it's totally mad and if anything is getting more centralised.
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
What policy would benefit the north, without (even further) subsidising it? If we could invest £10Bn and get £20Bn back for the economy with our money back over time then not a single politician would turn that down, there's actually been a load of support over the past ~5+ years for "levelling up" (AKA investment in the north) but we've not invested much because the returns are abysmal. Meanwhile there's a whole sta…
If we're talking about fantasy airport extensions, it might be good to have at least one decent international airport in Yorkshire rather than expanding MAN and/or BHX. Failing that, you would need to significantly improve the transport infrastructure around those airports to make other parts of the North easier to reach. Fast, reliable (!) train services for example. Car hire services suited to business people not j…
Leeds Bradford Airport is where exactly??
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#149I think there's a fundamental gap in this analysis, which is how hyper-local many of the inequalities are. Manchester has a GDP per capita of £59,000. Tameside, the poorest area in Greater Manchester, has a GDP per capita of £19,000. Leeds has a GDP per capita of £42k; ten miles away, Bradford has a GDP per capita of £23.6k. Those disparities are really difficult to explain in terms of infrastructure or commercial in…
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…
>Salford
Off topic, but I just wanted to say that Joy Division is one of my fave bands of all time.
Re: Why Northern England is poor
#150Earlier 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.
At the moment on LinkedIn there are about 15k results for jobs containing the “software engineer” keyword in the UK, compared to just over 3k for the “biology” keyword.
Despite this, 56k people graduated in biological sciences but 24k people graduated in computer science.
(Graduation data is from 2019/20 so may have changed slightly, but unlikely enough to move the needle)