Life Outside of London

Peter Kay has broken the internet with a BBC iplayer programme called "Car Share". It's quite funny.  According to the article I was reading today it's about two people sharing lifts to a "Northern" supermarket.

I've been to them, they had them when I was growing up.  Safeway?  Gateway? Fine Fayre?  Were they "Northern".  They don't sell the same food.  It's mostly internal organs and potatoes.  It is virtually impossible to buy balsalmic vinegar and it's exclusively real ale in bottles and no lager.

Or not.  In fact they're almost the same all over the UK,  I challenge you to get kidnapped, blindfolded and dumped in a Tesco store somewhere and to identify the city you are in without leaving the store.

Would they say if "Car Share" involved Jack Whitehall travelling to a "Southern" supermarket?  I don't think so, because "Southern" is just normal isn't it?  It's a bit like regional broadcasting.  Every region apart from London and the South East.  I'm not being deliberately prejudiced against the South.  I think the problem lies with London.

I remember on one of my first nights at University meeting 3 friends from Devon who pointed out to me that they never saw any good gigs in Devon. Nothing ever comes down south they said, it all stops in London.  It was the first time I had thought about it, I hadn't realised quite far away Devon was from ... anywhere.  I still thought Sheffield was in the Midlands.  We went on school trips to London and to visit my Uncle.  We travelled all round the UK to go to gigs, go on holiday, visit family.  When I finally met real people from London however, many of them confessed that they had rarely travelled outside of London except to leave the UK, even to go to University; why would they need to?

On our school trip down to the Harry Potter studios I asked my colleague why the studios were so close to London.  I was surprised to see house built right up to the edge of the studios and right to the edge of a dual carriageway.  Why would anyone want to live there?  They didn't of course, he explained, they build a ring road to avoid the residential areas and then build up to the new boundary.  Like when you put a cat in a box and somehow they end up filling all the space.  Wouldn't it make more sense to build a studio near East Midlands airport I asked?  It's near an airport and the motorway, surely one airport is as good as another for international film stars.  Then another film studio would spring up down south he told me and of course he's right.

So what is the government doing to regenerate the North and replace all the industry closed down in the 80s?  Build a high speed rail link ... to make it easier to get to London.  What if we don't want to go to London?  The DVLA was moved to Swansea, but now all my friends seem to have been made redundant by the DVLA.  Wouldn't it be a good idea if the new parliament buildings were somewhere near Birmingham?  That's the middle-ish.  I wonder what would happen to my 4 hour journey up home if the London MPs had to do it every week?

If the Houses of Parliament were somewhere else perhaps other business would follow.  The government should be the ones taking the lead, Businesses provide work for the companies, their lawyers, the accountants, the cleaners, the van drivers, the window cleaners, the local Starbucks and sandwich shops.

Radio 4 implied today that politicians could be scared of the North.  Shirley Williams suggested that politicians are cosseted within a world of other politically-savvy media people and media-savvy politicians.  The special edition of Question Time filmed in Yorkshire was apparently a bit blunt for the politicians.  The implication seemed to be that we don't really know how to behave when we meet politicians, that these Northerners got a little bit power-crazed and it somehow went to their heads.  We're just not quite civilised enough to be trusted with the grown up stuff.

So that's what I am checking for in my last few days of manifesto-reading.  What the plan is to spread the wealth, development and house prices across the nation.  Great Britain, the United Kingdom is greater than the sum of its parts and it is certainly bigger than our capital city.