This is an excellent article Michael. Exporting the surplus from a capitalist economy has a Marxist ring to it, although in this case it is surplus people rather than goods and services. London has used this labour for decades and not worried itself about the ones that got away. It makes sense that the number of escapees is rising, as you've written before about how the cost of housing makes it increasingly hard to migrate to the capital.
It is a disgrace when we have a Minister for Levelling Up and a government elected on the basis they would focus on the north that we are still discussing how to get started. Tearing up the Green Book is an easy place to begin. The description of it as "approved thinking models and methods" on the government website is scary enough and has the whiff of communism to it.
I like MT's stuff, if a little too long to read for many. Oop North is probably far more prosperous now than it was in the 1970s. The deserted or repurposed satanic mills of Victorian England were cruel temples of wage enslavement. Where did the investment for them come from? London and Liverpool as a result of either the infamous triangle of Sierra Leone, Jamaica and Liverpool or the East India Company. Where's the incentive to invest in fast local railways to move subsidised students and OAPs about? £Billions were spent to move people from Hull to Manchester by road. I can't work out the relative cost per mile but convenience is the deciding factor when rail is so expensive now and run by bolshey trade unions. WFH and the Internet has eaten deeply into commuting and we gave our manufacturing away to China. I'd go for a Spaceport and a scientific Silicon Valley set up. They'd be flying to work. The downside? Expat oligarchs, Oil countries and China would be there before our 'entrepreneurs' got out of bed.
This is an excellent article Michael. Exporting the surplus from a capitalist economy has a Marxist ring to it, although in this case it is surplus people rather than goods and services. London has used this labour for decades and not worried itself about the ones that got away. It makes sense that the number of escapees is rising, as you've written before about how the cost of housing makes it increasingly hard to migrate to the capital.
It is a disgrace when we have a Minister for Levelling Up and a government elected on the basis they would focus on the north that we are still discussing how to get started. Tearing up the Green Book is an easy place to begin. The description of it as "approved thinking models and methods" on the government website is scary enough and has the whiff of communism to it.
I like MT's stuff, if a little too long to read for many. Oop North is probably far more prosperous now than it was in the 1970s. The deserted or repurposed satanic mills of Victorian England were cruel temples of wage enslavement. Where did the investment for them come from? London and Liverpool as a result of either the infamous triangle of Sierra Leone, Jamaica and Liverpool or the East India Company. Where's the incentive to invest in fast local railways to move subsidised students and OAPs about? £Billions were spent to move people from Hull to Manchester by road. I can't work out the relative cost per mile but convenience is the deciding factor when rail is so expensive now and run by bolshey trade unions. WFH and the Internet has eaten deeply into commuting and we gave our manufacturing away to China. I'd go for a Spaceport and a scientific Silicon Valley set up. They'd be flying to work. The downside? Expat oligarchs, Oil countries and China would be there before our 'entrepreneurs' got out of bed.