The Off Topic Topic

[Eddie Teach]

I was replying directly to your line about people in the service industry getting more money and not addressing your point, whatever it was, at all.

[grumbler]

Doesn't do a waiter much good when >100% of that increased income is taken up by the increased rent.

And that's why there are no waiters in London, obviously.

[Josquius]

Its not just the boondocks. Its everywhere outside London.  The UK is missing a true second city that would make a second hub for example- Manchester is many times smaller than all logic says it should be.
You do know that the UK has cities other than London right?

To deny that this is an issue is to do as the brexiters do and deny fact.

I said calling it a result of focus is a lie, and you come up with the straw man that i deny it's an issue, and Eddie comes up with the straw man that anyone who moves to London is automatically better off.  Neither of those is a rebuttal of my point.

You were the one presenting a strawman that I think there's some real world national focus button. The world is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
During Thatcher's time however London was massively favoured whilst the rest of the country was actively destroyed amidst her ideological crusade.
In subsequent years momentum has played a large part however the general London-centric focus of government policy remains well observed. For instance London getting 10 times per head transport spending what the north gets, huge efforts going into saving the London based banks during the financial crisis whilst other industries that run into trouble are thrown to the dogs even when helping them would cost a fraction as much (the Tories and UKIP voting against EU attempts to put tariffs on Chinese steel which screwed over the British industry), austerity disproportionately hitting the north, etc...

Further London is the richest region in the EU. Whilst 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, France, British Isles) are in the UK.  To simply say its inevitable that the biggest city will thrive whilst others rot and the government can do nothing about it is bollocks.

[Eddie Teach]

Doesn't do a waiter much good when >100% of that increased income is taken up by the increased rent.

And that's why there are no waiters in London, obviously.

Poor schmucks.   

[garbon]

Doesn't do a waiter much good when >100% of that increased income is taken up by the increased rent.

And that's why there are no waiters in London, obviously.

Poor schmucks.   

No waiters would be Mono's dream. Just robots serving your food.

[Oexmelin]

There is a wealth of academic literature on the natural, unsubsidized, unregulated advantages enjoyed by cities

But there is much less, AFAIK, on the current decline of secondary, or tertiary cities, which we are witnessing in a number of Western countries currently.

[Admiral Yi]

You were the one presenting a strawman that I think there's some real world national focus button. The world is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
During Thatcher's time however London was massively favoured whilst the rest of the country was actively destroyed amidst her ideological crusade.
In subsequent years momentum has played a large part however the general London-centric focus of government policy remains well observed. For instance London getting 10 times per head transport spending what the north gets, huge efforts going into saving the London based banks during the financial crisis whilst other industries that run into trouble are thrown to the dogs even when helping them would cost a fraction as much (the Tories and UKIP voting against EU attempts to put tariffs on Chinese steel which screwed over the British industry), austerity disproportionately hitting the north, etc...

Further London is the richest region in the EU. Whilst 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, France, British Isles) are in the UK.  To simply say its inevitable that the biggest city will thrive whilst others rot and the government can do nothing about it is bollocks.

You accuse me of straw manning your position then in the very next sentence you talk about Thatcher "favoring" London.  How did she favor London?  Did she smile more at Londoners?

By any chance do you have a link for that 10X claim?

No one is disputing that London is richer than the rest of England.  It's the why that we're arguing about.

[Valmy]

My wife has been watching this British show on Victoria (which seems a little hagiographical for my tastes but I am not watching it too closely) and while watching it I realized that if the current British Succession law had been in effect back then, Kaiser Wilhelm II would have also been King William V of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Though I guess they probably would not have married off Victoria the Younger to the Prince of Prussia had she been the heir.

I am probably not the first person to point that out but I thought that was amusing.

[crazy canuck]

Its not just the boondocks. Its everywhere outside London.  The UK is missing a true second city that would make a second hub for example- Manchester is many times smaller than all logic says it should be.
You do know that the UK has cities other than London right?

To deny that this is an issue is to do as the brexiters do and deny fact.

I said calling it a result of focus is a lie, and you come up with the straw man that i deny it's an issue, and Eddie comes up with the straw man that anyone who moves to London is automatically better off.  Neither of those is a rebuttal of my point.

You were the one presenting a strawman that I think there's some real world national focus button. The world is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
During Thatcher's time however London was massively favoured whilst the rest of the country was actively destroyed amidst her ideological crusade.
In subsequent years momentum has played a large part however the general London-centric focus of government policy remains well observed. For instance London getting 10 times per head transport spending what the north gets, huge efforts going into saving the London based banks during the financial crisis whilst other industries that run into trouble are thrown to the dogs even when helping them would cost a fraction as much (the Tories and UKIP voting against EU attempts to put tariffs on Chinese steel which screwed over the British industry), austerity disproportionately hitting the north, etc...

Further London is the richest region in the EU. Whilst 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, France, British Isles) are in the UK.  To simply say its inevitable that the biggest city will thrive whilst others rot and the government can do nothing about it is bollocks.

Your discussion with Yi reminded me of a Guardian article from a while back - their take on it seemed more in line with the point Yi was making.

4 The decline of the north

When Britain's first female prime minister was in her pomp, northern football fans travelling to away games in London would be taunted by home supporters waving wads of £10 and £20 notes. The brutal repartee of the terraces expressed a fundamental truth of the Thatcher period: the north suffered the worst of the deep recession and high unemployment of the early years; and it benefited least from the eventual boom of the late 1980s.

It would be wrong to say that Thatcher planned the decline of the north's most vital industries and sources of employment. In fact, northern England suffered precisely from the absence of a plan in Westminster.

In 1985, explaining why she believed regional planning in Britain was a non-starter, Thatcher said: "If we try to discourage development and economic growth in large parts of the south of England, in the hope that it will happen in the large cities in the north, we risk losing them altogether."

Left to its own devices, the British economy rebalanced irrevocably to the south. Employment in the manufacturing industry, vital to the north's wellbeing, slumped, falling from 7.1 million in 1979 to 4.4m in 1993. Services and the booming City eventually took up much of the economic slack, but the good times were happening in the south.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/14/margaret-thatcher-20-changes-britain

[Threviel]

Further London is the richest region in the EU. Whilst 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, France, British Isles) are in the UK.  To simply say its inevitable that the biggest city will thrive whilst others rot and the government can do nothing about it is bollocks.

https://fullfact.org/economy/does-uk-have-poorest-regions-northern-europe/

[Richard Hakluyt]

I recall a survey in the Economist, back in the 1970s, worrying about the possible decline of London's manufacturing industries. At the time I worked in that sector along with more than 1 million others. The decline had already started (pre-Thatcher) and became relentless for the next forty years http://citiesofmaking.com/think-manufacturing-in-london-is-no-more/ .

But London has a huge and diverse economy, so, with a bit of pain, people moved into different sectors.

Meanwhile, in the North-East of England, the shipyards and mines were closing. But the economy there was smaller and less diverse so replacement sectors grew more slowly than down south. Also many of the better educated workers and youngsters left the NE for bright lights elsewhere; creating the apparent paradox that one reason for not setting up a business in the NE is that you can't get the staff. Nissan, for example, famously trained people at every level when it set up in Sunderland.

I think a lot of the pain in the NE is cultural. Back in the 1960s my family had weekly gatherings for Sunday tea, about 20 people, all shipyard workers or miners (and their dependants). The cultural level was surprisingly high; with classical music in one room, discussions of literature, chess and crosswords as well as lots of gossip. This ended with the closures in the 1980s; now we are scattered throughout the world and the greater family is no more. I would imagine it is pretty similar to how migrants feel; there are many gains for the people who leave but one is also losing something. It is not so bad for those of us who left and did well; but the ones who remained are still poor and have also lost all those cultural benefits. This, or something similar, has happened to a big proportion of the families there; it is why they still bang on about Thatcher even though the shipyards and mines would have closed years ago even if she had never existed.

[Maladict]

Further London is the richest region in the EU. Whilst 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, France, British Isles) are in the UK.  To simply say its inevitable that the biggest city will thrive whilst others rot and the government can do nothing about it is bollocks.

https://fullfact.org/economy/does-uk-have-poorest-regions-northern-europe/

Those EU region rankings are terrible. The EU consistently ranks the province of Groningen in the top 3 Dutch regions, when it is in fact the poorest of them all.
Every time new rankings are published they have to file a mountain of paperwork to save their subsidies.

[Syt]

Apparently the new Democrat senator from Arizona has caused a moral outcry among right wingers because of her attire, with some comparing her looks to a prostitute or stripper.

[Maladict]

Dutch roots 

I read an article about her a while ago, she's pretty interesting for a US politician.
First bisexual and first nontheist member of congress and a triathlete.

[Grey Fox]

Fuck your morale attire is so great.