In article , Michael Bell
wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:
Michael Bell:
But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail
and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than
the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be
viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be
justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW
travellers into London. A decision to build them at government expense is
a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all
development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And
maybe you should be too. Remember what happened to capitals which get too
far out of step with their countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris
municipality ("commune" in French = "municipality" in English: our
failure to translate this word has led us to serious misunderstanding of
this event) was crushed by the provinces.

Think hard!

But London has received _enormous_ underinvestment for decades - that's
why the transport system is so overcrowded. London puts far more into
the British economy than it gets out.

Now that's the way it should be - I'm not complaining, I realise that
London is the engine of this country's economy and consequently should
be expected to pay more than its fair share for investment elsewhere
that couldn't be paid for otherwise.

But major infrastructure projects like Thameslink and Crossrail are
needed in London, and I'm not sure I like the implication that they
should be abandoned because the rest of the country doesn't like to see
money spent on the capital. London _needs_ it - and if London were to
lose its position as a worldcity, it isn't just those inside the M25
that are going to be affected when the economy suffers.

Jonn Elledge


I'm afraid we'll have to agree to differ.

Michael Bell

Yes, OK, you deserve better, but I felt weary last night.

I find it hard to believe some statements, such as that London is
carrying the rest of the country economically. I look at the work and
activity in some places - is it really all nothing? Or does the statement
"that London is carrying the rest of the country" simply reflect the fact
that work may be done anywhere, but profits are reported by Head Office in
London? There is so much spin, most of it not simply party-political, that it
is hard to know the truth.

There is a great deal of London being bound up in itself. For example
you can read in the newspapers a plea to "save" a museum or suchlike (from
total destruction?) by being moved out of London and this is addressed to a
provincial readership who "of course" see it that way! I read once a
statement that "the further you get away from London, the more irrational the
spelling of place names become", Ah, yes the home counties, that hotbed of
phonetic spelling, with Slough, Reading, Greenwich, Islington and of course
London itself - rhymes with "cotton"! And the statement that the DTI
overcomes the "local" (ie, non-London) opposition to "National Companies" who
cannot get work outside London. The dreadful thing about this kind of thing
is that it is not deliberate and thought through, it is unthinking because it
is unchallenged because the papers and broadcasters and everybody they meet
are London.

One particularly vicious groups is "London First" whose policy is
exactly that, London FIRST! If London can't have it, then nobody should have
it, ie, its policy is to be a dog in the manger. I think that is simply
unacceptable in a democracy.

There is a great deal of favouratism for London and holding the North
back. London has unitary control of its local transport. Provincial cities
are not allowed to. In an act of great smallness Mrs Thatcher abolished
the GLC just to unseat Ken Livingstone and to hide this underhand motive, all
the other metropolitan counties of England too. After she was unseated, the
GLC was effectively re-instated. There was a lot of newspaper support for
that. But the other metropolitan counties were not re-instated. The garden in
and around London dug better. Governments have held back the developement of
Northern airports especially Manchester because they want to keep Heathrow as
a very dominant airport, partly for its own sake and partly to have a big
bargaining chip to use to preserve the position of the "national carriers" BA
and Virgin. I could go on, but I won't bore you.

You may like to think that London cares deeply its provinces. On the
Tyne it is widely claimed that the Jarrow march has held back the North-East
because it puts the North-East in a bad light as seen from London. And this
is believed by the London loyalists. Whether this is the TRUTH is very
difficult to test, but certainly it is widely BELIEVED. No matter what you
think the mechanism of this is (the inner workings of London are hidden
to folk so far away, they just have to look at the inputs and outputs and
treat London as a "black box"), you must come to see London as a
grudge-holder, a spiteful and vindicitive entity, though people don't like to
face up to it.

The FACTS may be hard to find, but let me do a little experiment to
test YOUR ATTITUDES.

Why is London so domininant? It is not a natural geographical
advantage, eg being on an important estuary, otherwise why is Goole not more
important? London's advantage is man-made. One thing that man has made
is that it is so big and so many transport links focus on it. It is big
because largely subsidised transport links have allowed its growth (Before
the war, the LNER built up commuter services from the West Riding to the
sea-side at Scarborough, about the same distance from Leeds as Brighton is
from London, but after the war, the services were abandoned as "not
worthwhile". No such questions about the London-Brighton service. Of Course
not! How could you think such a thing?) And rail routes focus on London and
outworn rolling stock was cascaded to "cross-country" routes - well, MPs
travelled on them! Transport is certainly one factor, and the subject of
this newsgroup, there may be other factors, such as political control, and
the London media were pretty stongly against a North-East assembly. And
whatever man has made, can be made again.

John Prescott, before the labour victory of 1997, proposed a new
North-South Shinkansen going London - Birmingham- Potteries - Manchester -
Leeds - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow. Let us say this route is built and
whatever other steps are necessary to enable this new megalopolis to function
on the same level as London are taken - what would your reaction be?

Would you applaud, and say it is great that this country now has two
cities functioning at this level? If "yes", then you're a patriot!

Or would deplore it and say "But that detracts from London" If "yes",
then you're a London Firster. A dog in the manger.


Michael Bell
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