...because there are no successful companies in Hull ?

How do they measure the success of investing tax payers money into development areas, (and its not always hard cash its often in the form of tax relief), is it when companies that southern based finance writers have heard of then open businesses in those areas or do they actually go and visit the area and have a look around for themselves ?

I can't say that Hull looks anymore or any less derelict than any other city I've been in recently.

Nice one!!

Its not just the condescending view of lazy journalists its also the view of most of the rugby league supporting community.

On rlfans I see loads of posts saying Bradford, Hull, Salford, Wakey, Widnes, St Helens etc are just a dump and a poophole and why would anyone want to live there?

1) [iThe Economist[/i is somewhat better than "lazy journalism", whether one agrees with its opinions or not. It's also a quite serious reflection of what some quite powerful people are thinking.

2) It was Willie Whitelaw who talked about the 'managed decline' of Liverpool. The difference here is that it's apparently being discussed in a rather more open way.

With the UK's apparent obssession with being part of the EU, what has happened to the North will happen to London and the SE within the next 30 years. We are too far from the centre of power in the EU to be anything other than a backwater in the future.

Did they mention insular, tribal and less tolerant than the south too?

EU funding and grants have often been the only or biggest source of funds for projects in some of the poorest areas of Britain.

A point that I make over and over again and one of the principal aims of the EU, take a country lacking in or with poor infrastructure, invest in it with new roads, attract businesses to invest in it, then draw the levy some years later and repeat for the next impoverished country - the UK was that impoverished country once.

It doesn't work though. You cannot just throw money at areas and create a sustainable economy. Fringe areas in the geographical sense will remain poor. Germany is the centre of Europe. If the UK stays in the EU then logically it could become Europe's offshore wildlife have - a giant national park for Europe. Personally, I think that would be a good thing but others will have an emotional attachment to the place rather than moving to Central Europe where the jobs will be.

You think Germany is the largest economy because it's in the middle of Europe?
Nothing to do with superb, modern manufacturing? Investment in key industries? Investment in infrastructure and education? A less short-term view of business? Good industrial relations?
Why isn't Poland just as successful?

I assume as well that Germany has no immigrants as immigrants are the main problem in the UK?

You have never worked for a company who was involved in the 1970s/80s in the construction of what is now a large "new town" where once was a village of a few hundred inhabitants who all worked in a city ten miles away - I go back there often and its changed beyond all recognition even to when I left the area, its hard for me now to spot the roads that were built on EU money back then, dual carriageways with wide junctions, good wide access roads onto industrial estates built with enough space for hundreds of HGv's to have good access to the mixture of both large manufacturing and warehousing, and small start up units - its hard for me to spot those original infrastructure investments that I was involved in because they were just the start and they've never stopped building since - Washington New Town has been a major EU success story and yet when I first arrived in 1977 it was a small pit village without a pit and a massive new road system built entirely on EU funding - I moved back to Leeds in 1985 only to see exactly the same thing happen in the Dearne Valley in South Yorkshire.

Please don't tell me it doesn't work.

And where is one of the most successful manufacturing stories of the late 90's to date based?

Do you mean Nissan and the influence it has had on the surrounding area with its gathering of feeder companies all keen to be in close proximity to its "just in time" procurement practices ?

You're right, its certainly no coincidence that they chose an area where, by the time they moved in, had already had ten years worth of EU infrastructure spending into an economically and employment depressed community, all the civil engineering works were in place for them, excellent trunk road links to North and South and more importantly a huge swath of virgin industrial estates laid out ready for their suppliers.

And to cap it all I got eight years worth of employment out of the region

Hull is still clinging onto the hope Siemens are coming to town.
Would be massive for the city, feeder companies etc as JC alludes.
I'm blase on the renewable energy argument.
Just want them here to pump some much needed life into the veins of the economy of our great city.
We deserve it.

Yep. Plus, of course, access to the EU market.

And a loyal, highly motivated, skilled work force that just needed cross training to their needs.

I've been inside Nissan Sunderland as one of our clients was a sub contractor there, I've also been inside Toyota at Derby for the same client and we have a Toyota subsiduary as a direct client of ours, each one employs several thousand and was set up from scratch to be run on the Japanese model with single union agreements, workers committees and no demarkation between "bosses and workers", indeed at one of the sites I go to the MD of the whole UK operation sits at an ordinary desk just behind the PC that I usually work on so you have to be careful what you're saying



A decade and a half or so on from their conception you have to say that they are very successful business models in an industry that traditionally, and run in the British way, had been a shining example of how not to manufacture anything at all.

Quote ="Euclid"... Is this just economic reality or another condescending article by lazy journalists out to perpetuate out of date stereotypes?'" My guess is lazy journalists, possibly with a rightward leaning. "The North" is a problem for the right wing electorally because, in the North, proportionally more middle-class people vote Labour than working class do in the South (source? ... er ... [iThe Economist[/i last year www.economist.com/node/21562938). Many in the North still haven't forgiven the acts of the 1980's, which they still see as an attempt to close down non-Tory regions, a notion that is not entirely untrue. Many more resent what they perceive as the Southern attitude. There is an erroneous school of thought in London (it frequently crops up in the [iEvening Standard[/i) that London supports the rest of the UK. Those who subscribe to that view conveniently forget that a lot of the wealth that London "creates" is actually extracted via trading that could not occur were it not for the efforts of the rest of the country (and world). To suggest that the rest of the country should therefore be managed downwards is to imagine that the financial sector and the other sectors that service it are all we have, and that trickle-down economics works. Which is a) nonsense and b) undesirable in a balanced economy. [iThe Economist[/i often fails in genuine economic thinking.

Quote ="Euclid"... Is this just economic reality or another condescending article by lazy journalists out to perpetuate out of date stereotypes?'" My guess is lazy journalists, possibly with a rightward leaning. "The North" is a problem for the right wing electorally because, in the North, proportionally more middle-class people vote Labour than working class do in the South (source? ... er ... [iThe Economist[/i last year www.economist.com/node/21562938). Many in the North still haven't forgiven the acts of the 1980's, which they still see as an attempt to close down non-Tory regions, a notion that is not entirely untrue. Many more resent what they perceive as the Southern attitude. There is an erroneous school of thought in London (it frequently crops up in the [iEvening Standard[/i) that London supports the rest of the UK. Those who subscribe to that view conveniently forget that a lot of the wealth that London "creates" is actually extracted via trading that could not occur were it not for the efforts of the rest of the country (and world). To suggest that the rest of the country should therefore be managed downwards is to imagine that the financial sector and the other sectors that service it are all we have, and that trickle-down economics works. Which is a) nonsense and b) undesirable in a balanced economy. [iThe Economist[/i often fails in genuine economic thinking.

The problem with the North is that the people there are fundamentally lazy. They prefer to sit at home moaning about a government from 30 years ago than going out to get a job. They seem to think that just because their grandfathers worked in coal mines, and those mines are no longer in operation, they are therefore unable to do any job in the world. Jobs such as working in supermarkets/ fast food outlets are viewed as being either (a) beyond their skills remit (even though many have never been in a coal mine that is the only job they can possibly do and since bloody Thatcher closed them down they are doomed to a life of unemployment), (b) beneath them (for some reason digging up a lump of carbon from the ground is heroic and noble whereas putting a lump of carbon on a shelf is degrading) or (c) not being worthwhile because they pay less than £1m per year.

People have slated the Evening Standard, but what it says is absolutely true. People in the South work hard - often 11-12 hours per day - and are entrepreneurial. They look for jobs and try their best. If they cannot find a job they set up their own business. They make the money that funds the idleness of the North - either through benefits to the unemployed or through the salaries of public sector non-jobs.

Why is it that immigrants are able to move to the North and get jobs, yet the indigenous locals have been unable to do so for 30 years? Given the national minimum wage, the argument that immigrants are cheaper doesn't really wash.

What is even worse is that they seem to think that they have some sort of inane right to be given the hard-earned money of people in the South. If the nation elects a Tory government that decides to steal less money from the hard-working people in the South there is uproar at the policies of the nasty Tories. Why should 4 hours of my labour each day be used to provide the funds for the unemployed to sit at home watching Jeremy Kyle, smoking and getting high?

Because most immigrants can speak better English.

Nowhere near subtle enough if you want a bend in the rod.
Must try harder.

There is one part of Titans monologue that is absolutely true - the bit about how up here in the North we refuse to put lumps of carbon on shop shelves because its beneath us.

Why just this morning I was down our local co-op for some coal fo't bairns snap box and the shelves were bare, when I asked Arkwright WTF he was doing he just folded his arms in that most stubborn of ways and shouted out the back for Tomas the Pole to shift his idle backside out here and get some co-il on these ere bloody shelves and while the bloody idle Pole dragged a sack in from the yard me and Arkwright had a right good chinwag about how you can't get the staff these days and in his fatha's time you'd never have seen empty coal shelves like that, bloody disgrace I tell you, don't know what this worlds coming to, my bairns nearly missed first bell waiting for their snap boxes.

Typos changed and highlighted in =#FF0000RED just to make it easier for you to comprehend.

I know that it may be a lost cause, but at least I still have humanity and don't mind helping people out less fortunate than myself. In your case it is helping you in understanding how to apply common sense and logic, but I must admit it is a struggle but then perseverance and hard work pays off in the long run dosn't it?



Or is that just right wing froth?

Titan, old chap, you need to change your bait.