The UK has typically had the highest levels of income inequality in Europe.
A previous Prime Minister had been quoted 'A pound spent in Croydon is far more of value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde', Croydon being in London and Strathclyde being an administrative area in West Scotland that ceased to exist in 1975. The quote was from 2012.
WFH has allowed me to continue working from rural Scotland, to be honest I thought COVID would radically transform society's thinking and our requirement to be in high GDP areas for certain lines of work. Doesn't seem to have had quite the impact it was supposed to.
That's how infrastructure projects are prioritised in the UK. Return on the pound. The south east returns something like 10x the investment versus the north of England.
Just look at HS2 - everything north and north east of Birmingham has effectively been cancelled, leaving yet another "national" infrastructure project serving only London.
This Government, or the previous one, or the previous one, ad nauseam, continually fail to invest in the north, and north east. In fact the last major national infrastructure in those regions would be the building of the motorways. (edit) And just look at the North East, Sedgefield had Labour PM Tony Blair, Hartlepool had MP and cabinet member Peter Mandelson, and yet the investment there during that 15 year period was negligible. It's a London-based Government thing, not a political thing.
If you're not "close" to London, you're going to be poor by comparison.
Bringing Newcastle closer to Leeds by faster road and rail, and hence York, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool and the Potteries, would hugely increase economic productivity in the North of England.
I too hope that WFH will redistribute the wealth around the UK.
I hate the fact that we have an idiotic adversarial political system. Which ever party is in power is invariably hamstrung by the opposition voting the other way just 'because', is pathetically childish. The best time to build infrastructure was yesterday.
> Which ever party is in power is invariably hamstrung by the opposition voting the other way just 'because'
As the other comment has pointed out, this is irrelevant: in practice, as with Brexit, a majority of 1 can let you do almost _anything_ in the British constitution.
No, the real constraint is either internal opposition - party infighting - or what the newspapers will hammer you for.
Many of the UK's most depressed towns voted for Brexit, seemingly in the belief this might mean funding diverted towards them. It did not, because why would it? Nobody cared about them before, nobody cares about them after. Only marginal constituencies matter.
They're almost never hamstrung by the opposition voting against them. If they didn't have a majority, they wouldn't be the government. Right now the majority is, what, 80? They could pass anything they wanted.
That's not the opposition's fault, or the adverserial system's. It's infighting. And to be honest they could still get a fair bit done with a majority of 80, should they feel inclined.
> Sunak said: “I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure areas like [Tunbridge Wells, Kent] are getting the funding they deserved. We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that.”
Although Croydon is a London borough, it's quite far outside of central London, to the point that it doesn't really feel part of London. It's also quite a deprived area. So that quote is weird on a number of levels!
The average "Index of Multiple Deprivation" [1] for Croydon is about 14,000, where every area (of some equal population size) is ranked from 1 to 32,884. Very roughly average for England.
Scotland isn't included, so I can't compare Strathclyde, but Blackpool's average is 5,900 — and includes 8 of the 10 most deprived places in the country.
Only one bit of London (part of Haringey) makes the top 1000. Only 106 bits of London (out of 4685) make the top 10%.
"Both Croydon and Strathclyde are shit places, but Croydon is a little less shit. By spending that pound in Croydon we can hopefully avoid it becoming Strathclyde"
I think his general idea was that money invested in London was of greater economic benefit to the whole country than investing the same amount elsewhere.
Most people really don't prefer a rural setting. People go to these "high GDP" places because there is a greater abundance of opportunities there. Relationships, friends, career, networks, etc. Even if you can work rurally due to remote work, you miss out on a lot by not being where other people are.
Of my close friends from uni days, only one lives in london, and that’s by choice (her job was moved from london to somewhere in Surrey well before covid so she was “reverse commuting” several times a week.
The others live in a seaside town in devon, a Wiltshire village, a Shropshire village, and one lives in a small Derbyshire town.
London's population is still growing, and faster than the UK population. People want to be in cities, not just because there are more jobs there. Definitely dependent on demographics though.
Worth noting that London is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world. Over a third of people there were not born in the UK. There could be many reasons for this including high salary jobs, but other reasons like parking assets in a relatively stable democracy, emigrating to a culture similar to their own, I'm sure the list could go on.
And perhaps because those people are capable/willing to emigrate are possibly more likely to contribute to the economy, there is a net gain for the whole country. Clearly there are reasons why London itself is highly diverse with its international arrivals.
Beyond an economic gain/crutch, does it really benefit members of the same country hundreds of miles away, other than being subsidised by the spoils?
The preferred rural setting for wealthier people in Britain is the villages surrounding London, especially the ones with a decent rail connection to London for trips to the theatre, concerts and so on.
Most people prefer having a house and a garage/shed/garden. They go rural not because they like that but because that's only achievable way to get that. I'd absolutely love be in exact same spot in city but own a house instead of renting an apartment
A previous Prime Minister had been quoted 'A pound spent in Croydon is far more of value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde', Croydon being in London and Strathclyde being an administrative area in West Scotland that ceased to exist in 1975. The quote was from 2012.
WFH has allowed me to continue working from rural Scotland, to be honest I thought COVID would radically transform society's thinking and our requirement to be in high GDP areas for certain lines of work. Doesn't seem to have had quite the impact it was supposed to.