Northeners should move South

Northern cities such as Liverpool are beyond revival and millions of their residents should move to London and the South East instead, a think tank has said.


Policy Exchange said a mass internal migration was the only answer to a decade of failed efforts to concentrate regeneration cash on other parts of the country.

All of the three million new homes planned by the Government should be shared equally between the capital city, Oxford and Cambridge, it concluded in a radical report.

And money currently being pumped into renewal projects and back-to-work schemes should instead be given directly to councils according to local wage levels to spend on regeneration measures.

In conclusions the authors conceded might be viewed as "barmy", they said coastal cities such as Liverpool and Sunderland had "lost much of their raison d'etre" with the decline of shipping and had "little prospect of offering their residents the standard of living to which they aspire".
It was time to be "realistic about the ability of cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle to regenerate struggling nearby towns such as Liverpool, Bradford and Sunderland.

"No one is suggesting that residents should be forced to move, but we do argue that they should be told the reality of the position: regeneration, in the sense of convergence, will not happen, because it is not possible," it concluded.

Restrictions on house-building in the south east should be lifted to lower house prices and stop people on low incomes being "trapped" in less prosperous parts of the country, the authors said.
Land earmarked for industrial use should be released for housing, it said, suggesting that adding a minute's journey time to the edge of London's suburbs would make room for a million more people. And the resulting price increase for industrial land would force some firms to relocate to cheaper areas, meaning more jobs for people in struggling towns and cities.

The university cities of Oxford and Cambridge were well placed to become the economic power-houses of the 21st century, it argued, like the industrial north more than a century ago. "We should consider expanding both dramatically, just as Liverpool and Manchester expanded in the 19th century. Dynamic economies require dynamic economic geography."

stay up north if you dont mind please. the south is crowded enough without you oiks spoiling it for us wealthy-happy-with-our-quality-of-life-southeners....

I dont know whether to laugh or cry. While i agree we appear to have more chavs up here we also have less poncy, up there own ass, think tank, ****s

2penneth..

I read that too and couldn't believe it. Having lived all over the UK, I can quite happily say I've never seen such poverty, over crowding and unease as in the South of England.

Sunderland is a sh!thole though.

I wonder how much this 'thinktank' cost

Bad points,

Everyone squeezed in a tiny cramped area.
Fewer terrorists bombs needed to kill us all
We would have to listen to extremely irritating accents
Closer to France
Roads would be chaos
Water/electricity supplies would be stretched
Poor beer
Harder to pull a decent lass
Poor curry
Rampant crime
Too many men who spend to much time looking at other men
etc etc

Good points,

Further away from Sunderland........right i'm off to pack my bags!!!

surely

Originally Posted by Odin

Harder to pull a decent lass

becomes easier due to...

Originally Posted by Odin

Too many men who spend to much time looking at other men
etc etc

lets sumise...

north = good

south = bad


job done. next question

Idiocy. We should decentralise from London not crowd around it further. With a better internet structure in place, where people work from should get less important and there would be far less reason for so many admin centres to reside in/around London. With terrorism and green issues supposedly being so important, why the hell are they contemplating something that'd exacerbate both? No other country in Europe is so stupidly reliant on its capital as we are. A few bombs around London and most of the country would be ****ed.

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

I wonder how much this 'thinktank' cost

I wonder where they live... I bet it's not Berkshire.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Originally Posted by Sosha

Don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Do both and keep 'em guessing.