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"Mind The Gap: London Vs The Rest"

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  1. chdot
    Admin

    "

    Given London’s dominance, Evan Davis asks what can the rest of Britain learn from the capital’s success? And can we create a city with the pull of London, outside London - a megacity of the north?

    Evan takes a ride on the steep track at the National Cycling Centre, where Britain’s top track cyclists cluster, enabling them to become the world’s best. It becomes clear talented people do better working next to each other.

    "

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/10/mind-the-gap.html

    Amazing how 'cycling' gets dragged into everything.

    2 part series basically about how to counteract the fact that over many years London has had the bulk of UK public investment.

    'Liverpool and Manchester should join up to create a mega-city to compete'.

    Similar used to be suggested for Edinburgh and Glasgow.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  2. gibbo
    Member

    what can the rest of Britain learn from the capital’s success?

    That being a capital city confers enormous economic benefits?

    How is London's "success" any different to Paris' "success"?

    People have pointed out that Germany doesn't have such a lop-sided setup, but we need to remember that Germany used to be 2 countries. And that, when Berlin was communist, the financial sector built up in a smaller city in the west.

    In the UK, everything is in London - the parliament, the monarchy, the stock market, the BBC, the press, the civil service...

    Posted 10 years ago #

  3. holisticglint
    Member

    If only there was some process by which Edinburgh could become a national capital...

    Posted 10 years ago #

  4. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Traditionally, due to its geography (islands of fertile land seperated by seas of moor and mountain) Scotland had no single capital, no Archbishop, no single seat of learning.

    Court sat in Dunfermline, the declaration of nationhood was signed in Arbroath, the first university was at St Andrews.

    I'm hoping an independent Scotland will follow this model and avoid Edinburgh becoming a resented and overheated resource drain like London.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  5. Smudge
    Member

    @IWRATS some would say "too late, too late..."

    But I promise that's my last political comment of the day as I cycle and talk cycles because it makes me feel happier/better, and politics generally has the opposite effect!

    Posted 10 years ago #

  6. AKen
    Member

    People have pointed out that Germany doesn't have such a lop-sided setup, but we need to remember that Germany used to be 2 countries

    It's more than that, Germany used to be about 25 countries, until the 1870s. Which possibly explains the vigour of cities like Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart - they were all capitals in their own right (or free cities in the case of Hamburg).

    Posted 10 years ago #

  7. chdot
    Admin

    "I'm hoping an independent Scotland will follow this model"

    I'm sure Inverness would love to be declared capital - closer to the Nordic countries.

    If it was Stornoway (my spellcheck thinks it should be Stornaway!) I'm sure the ferry service would rapidly improve and get cheaper!

    Berwick might be a good choice (yes I know it's not currently in Scotland) - it could be 'capital of mainland Britain, + sundry small islands, outside London'.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  8. chdot
    Admin

    Could be Edinburgh and Glasgow - but the train wifi would have to improve!

    Posted 10 years ago #

  9. PS
    Member

    How is London's "success" any different to Paris' "success"?

    I think there is much more regionality in France than Britain. Paris isn't anything like the behemoth in France that London is in Britain.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  10. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    We could take the Spanish approach and situate the capital in the centre of the country, regardless of suitability.

    That would place New Dalriada on a hillside somewhere between Dalwhinnie and Blair Atholl. That may be a godforsaken, sodden, midge-infested wilderness, but it is handy for the A9 cycle path to north and south.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  11. steveo
    Member

    Stick the capital on Rannoch Moor and close the train station Monday to Friday. The politians might actually attend parliment that way, or take up long distance hiking.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  12. gibbo
    Member

    It's more than that, Germany used to be about 25 countries, until the 1870s. Which possibly explains the vigour of cities like Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart - they were all capitals in their own right (or free cities in the case of Hamburg).

    And West Germany took a more federal approach to government, which is likely to have helped as well.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  13. cc
    Member

    Plus West Germany lost half of Berlin and all of its hinterland, not to mention Silesia, Pomerania and parts further east. But losing Berlin meant losing the closest thing it had to an over-dominant malignant tumour city like London.

    map showing German territory changes in 20th century

    wikipedia: territorial evolution of Germany

    Posted 10 years ago #

  14. Dave
    Member

    It's hard to know what is really meant by "London is over-dominant".

    I won't attempt to do justice to this in a forum topic, but the self-evident reason people invest in London is because that investment gets the biggest return.

    You could spend £5m revamping Leith Walk or the same on an equivalent street in London, where the same investment might be enjoyed by 10-20x as many people.

    It's difficult to know how to "solve" this, except by deliberately sabotaging the benefits people get by co-locating. i.e. you could deliberately not invest in the 20x people in London but instead get 5% of the return by revamping a mile of street in some north-west town.

    At face value that sounds like it would be bad for the country as a whole, whether or not citizens happen to live in London?

    Posted 10 years ago #

  15. PS
    Member

    There's a balance to be struck though - the more you invest in London, the more it drains people from the rest of the UK, the more house prices in the SE rise and people's quality of life suffers.

    There's also a question of to what extent the investment is in repsonse to the growth or actually fuels the growth.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  16. Dave
    Member

    But house prices rise simply because it's a more valuable place to live, i.e. people think it's worth more to live there, so they do in fact pay more?

    Posted 10 years ago #

  17. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Chicken and egg time - is London a "magnet" drawing people and money in by its benefits, opportunities and charms, or a "sink", inevitably draining money and people towards it as there aren't alternatives.

    There's probably a reason why many successful and sensible companies without the requirement or want for a vanity central-London address would never dream of headquartering themselves there.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  18. wee folding bike
    Member

    It was reasonably horrible 25 years ago. It is a lot more busy now. Even so there are some nice quiet bits to be found if you go to the right places. I worked 10 minutes walk from Kensington Gdns/Hyde Park and even on the busiest days you could find a tree to sit under. Crystal Palace park was more of a trek but had its own charm.

    I can't imagine living there again but it seems I'm to be the token kilt at my cousin's wedding in Harrow this summer. My mum wants to spend a couple of days seeing the sights and she has a handy tour guide on tap. I'm in two minds about how to approach this. I'm used to getting around London on a bike where you see lots of things and get places fast. I think I'm going to use a mixture of busses and subway. Septuagenarians who haven't been on a bike in decades, outwith the back of a tandem round Gt Cumbrae, might not enjoy cycling there… unless I hired a tandem.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  19. Nelly
    Member

    "There's probably a reason why many successful and sensible companies without the requirement or want for a vanity central-London address would never dream of headquartering themselves there"

    Indeed, but you are correct it is chicken/egg. Unless those companies can do 'stuff' not requiring London then they tend to gravitate there as it is 'easier to do business'. Even flagship Scottish names like Aberdeen Asset Managers have a huge presence in London as that is where the 'talent' is in their game.

    It is a bit of a shame as anyone on less than £100k probably has a relatively poor quality of life re travel / housing / schools etc.

    In my opinion, London and Paris work the same way, both too big now to change and both will continue to suck in huge amounts of inward investment particularly transport infra (airports etc). Cant remember how many airports Paris has now - 3 or 4?

    Posted 10 years ago #

  20. crowriver
    Member

    @Dave, that is bordering on the dismissive attitude Londoners espouse towards the 'provinces'. I recall this attitude being very prevalent when I lived there. London is different, to be sure: it's a global megacity. Many visitors to the UK only go there, and never see anything else. Likewise in business, culture, etc.

    If you look at the public investment per capita in London on transport, for example, it is much higher than anywhere else in the UK. That goes much further than so-called 'return on investment' to more of a case of exceptionalism. There is a lot of pump priming with public investment too: projects like the Jubilee line extension, Crossrail, etc. help open up areas of the city that were relatively poorly connected, and then property prices rise as people move there.

    Oh and let's not forget the Channel Tunnel/Eurostar. Originally some services were supposed to continue on to the north and Scotland: somehow the plans were quietly shelved after Waterloo international opened (which of course is now superceded by another revanped station, St Pancras). It can be argued now that Scots and northerners can simply trundle their cases across from King's Cross to catch Eurostar, but it's not quite the same as having a dedicated service (and reinforces the notion of London as the essential connection).

    It would be interesting to see how Londoners got on with the same per capita public spend as the UK average. Also how would public sector workers survive without 'London weighting' on their salaries?

    Posted 10 years ago #

  21. wee folding bike
    Member

    There are other subsidies like the Olympics and royal events.

    Then there are hidden subsidies for example much of the UK armed forces are stationed in the south east. That might have made sense when the threat was from Napoleon. Now it just means squadies spending their pay down there and less traveling for the officers and wives when it's time for Wimbledon, Henley and the boat race.

    And yes, I remember the direct trains to Paris line too.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  22. Dave
    Member

    If you look at the public investment per capita in London on transport, for example, it is much higher than anywhere else in the UK. That goes much further than so-called 'return on investment' to more of a case of exceptionalism.

    But is it that simple? What if we measured public investment vs tax income rather than a simple headcount?

    Obviously public investment is about more than ROI, but suppose every pound per head spent in the south east enables people to raise their salaries such that the public purse benefits by £5 (paid out by the employer, some faceless multinational), whereas investing £1 per head in Fife boosts pay by 50p.

    I have no idea if that's true or not, but it seems like an oversimplification to ignore it.

    If companies could do better outside of London they certainly wouldn't locate there - the market in property, wages, everything, is pricing that advantage in plain view.

    PS. I'm from a small town near Edinburgh, in case anyone wonders!

    Posted 10 years ago #

  23. wee folding bike
    Member

    I think it's difficult to deconvolute how much is made in London and how much is made elsewhere but recorded in London. For example HMRC record most whisky as being from England because that's where it leaves the UK.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  24. gibbo
    Member

    If the question is, "what can the rest of Britain learn from the capital’s success?", we don't seem to have any answers.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  25. crowriver
    Member

    If the question is, "what can the rest of Britain learn from the capital’s success?", we don't seem to have any answers.

    One (possibly contentious) answer is this.

    Step 1: Secure the seat of central government.
    Step 2: Base all the government ministries in the seat of central government.
    Step 3: Create a special, quasi-autonomous region of the city for financial investments (let's call it 'The City'). Ensure its governance is suitably opaque and that very few ordinary people (voters) actually live there.
    Step 4: Run like that for several centuries. Maybe your city will become the administrative and commercial centre of a huge global empire, maybe not.
    Step 5: If you had an empire, but then lost it, look for alternatives to industrial manufacturing: banking and finance, perhaps.
    Step 6: If you become a democracy with universal suffrage, put a city resident in charge of the main political parties wherever possible.
    Step 7: If your empire faces staggering decline, try to get a champion of finance elected to government.
    Step 8: If elected, persuade that government to end conrols on international capital flows.
    Step 9: Sit back and watch as the industrial manufacturing of regional competitor cities/the hinterland collapses as a consequence of capital filght and resulting inability to invest. Decry your competitor settlements' industries as 'inefficient' and 'outdated' compared to your city's industries, which are 'the future'.
    Step 10: Persuade the government to deregulate financial services, and privatise publicly owned assets cheaply to generate private sector profits for your city's financial services sector.
    Step 11: Sit back and watch as your city becomes almost exclusively focussed on financial services. Property prices soar through the roof, forcing out the proles.
    Step 12: Continue to insist on high levels of public spending for your city, justiying this as investment in sucess.
    Step 13: Argue that investing public money in regional competitor cities/the hinterland is a waste of money as these places are failures.
    Sep 14: Carry on with these policies as long as you can get away with them. The longer they continue, the more dependent the much diminished empire will be upon your city.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  26. gibbo
    Member

    @crowdriver

    Yes, the lesson is to "be London".

    i.e. The "success" isn't the result of better management of resources - which is a success that could be studied and replicated by other British cities - but more the result of being handed all the resources...

    Evan Davis asked what can the rest of Britain learn... and the answer is, not much... or that we're getting a bum deal.

    Maybe the lesson is for London? Maybe they should learn a bit more humility?

    Posted 10 years ago #

  27. PS
    Member

    If you want to do the history thing, the blame sits with geography (London is the prime trading site as the entrance to the British Isles from the main medieval trading ports of the Low Countries (and France), and various kings choosing to site their court near this great trading centre (and who can blame them - it's always nice to have the good stuff close to hand).

    Over the centuries the court solidified into the institutions of government. The post-industrial decline of regional centres has simply increased the imbalance.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  28. crowriver
    Member

    Some details on the sorry saga of Regional Eurostar:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Eurostar

    Posted 10 years ago #

  29. wee folding bike
    Member

    Herald reports that the top travel method to the rest of the UK is by plane.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport/top-travel-method-to-rest-of-uk-is-by-air.23543479

    I wouldn't have even considered it. Ho hum.

    Posted 10 years ago #

  30. chdot
    Admin

    NOW

    Posted 10 years ago #

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