Michael Bell wrote:
wrote:
Michael Bell wrote:
[snip]

Capital cities are big because governments want them to be, think how
Ankara grew from a small town to a metropolis when it was made the Turkish
capital, how Moscow grew when it became capital after St Petersburg.

But how much of that is because they want them to be? And how much
because they're THERE????

Look at the attitudes, people say that Rome is a "failed capital"
because it has not attracted the fashion industry (though it tried to pay it
to come to Rome, and Italian scandal of some years ago) and pull in the
financial centre from Turin.

People are likely to regard any city that tries and fails to attract
business as a failure, regardless of whether or not it's the capital.

How could Combine that with tourism and - I know I keep banging on
about this, but it's an important point - London's role as one of the
world's great financial centres, and the result is the London not only has
a GDP on par with any other part of the country with a similar work force;
it probably actually has GDP exceeding it, because of all the international
finance sloshing about there. That's a pretty important structural factor -
you can't just one day decide those workers should all be dispersed around
the country (take note Gordon Brown), because the world doesn't work like
that. No other city in Britain - hell, no other city in Europe, really -
can compete with London on an economic score, not because of prejudiced
policies, but because of demographics and financial structures. I don't
think that's showing prejudice - I actually think that's stating the bloody
obvious, so am half expecting to be told I'm being patronizing any post
now.

Apart from cancer, the real world does not "run away". There are
always feedbacks which control.

Indeed there are, and they do have some controlling effects on the
current situation. But negative feedback is not always desirable.

A large city has economies of scale, but
also diseconomies of scale, eg, it cannot pay for the transport needed to
be *unitedly* so big - it would confer no benefits to live near others but
never to travel to meet them. The extra costs are offset by transport
subsidies and "London weighting". Think of the squeals if these were
withdrawn and the real costs had to be paid!

The reality is again rather different from your theory - transport is
heavily subsidized in other cities and rural areas, often to a greater
extent than in London.

The UK (in the 80s and 90s) has had far more experience than most
countries at cutting transport subsidies. London bus subsidies were cut
until for one financial year the network broke even, but the quality of
services suffered so much that afterwards it was generally accepted that
the subsidies are a price worth paying. Train fares rose much faster
than inflation, but that resulted in London house prices skyrocketting
as long distance commuting became less attractive.

As for London Weighting, that's just part of peoples' wages - it's paid
for by the employers, yet the employers are quite happy to locate
themselves in London, so obviously they think it's worth it.

How exactly have they done that? Manchester airport has had another
runway added, despite being far less busy. And while the government
are currently keen on some misguided policies that would keep Heathrow
dominant, they don't involve holding back the development of Northern
airports.

You are simply wrong there.

How? And why do you think there will be the same demand for
international travel to Manchester as there is to London?

Heathrow cannot cope.

That's what they want you to think, but the truth is that Heathrow can
cope just fine.

The locals don't want to overspill it to Stansted or Gatwick.

Which is quite understandable considering the extra noise it would cause
- and considering the number of disused and underused runways that could
be developed into London airports...

Manchester airport put adverts in the papers 2 or 3 years ago
showing an eagle filling a parrot cage with a caption saying roughly "Let
us fly. Let us have a second runway"

And I won't be at all surprised if Stansted tries the same tactic.

Hang on... 2 or 3 years ago??? Then it WAS Stansted! Manchester had
already got its second runway by then!!!

The difference between one runway and two runways is as great as the
difference between single track and double track.

Sorry, but that statement is absolutely ridiculous! Gatwick is one of
the world's 20 busiest airports [by 2003 passenger numbers, as newer
figures are not yet available AFAIK] but only has a single runway.
Single track has less than half the capacity of double track because a
train travelling in the other direction will completely occupy the
section to the next passing loop. This doesn't apply to runway capacity
as aircraft normally both take off and land into the wind. Furthermore,
Manchester Airport's second runway is a staggered close parallel runway,
so can't be used in independent mixed mode operation - it has to be
takeoffs on one runway and landings on the other, so air traffic
movements have to be further apart because of the turbulence that each
aircraft creates.

[snip]

Relocating economic activity from London to elsewhere would cost a
fortune.

I'm not asking for that. I am simply asking for conditions to be
created which allow the North to flourish. For the North not be held back.

But what conditions do you think would allow the North to flourish? You
keep trying to claim London's holding the North back, but you've yet to
post any evidence of this.

The Manchester airport affair is simply the best documented example of it.

I've seen documents claiming that the economic benefits of Manchester's
new runway were vastly overstated. The arguments seemed pretty
convincing, but they were from one of the organizations that had (before
the new runway was constructed) opposed it on environmental grounds. You
seem to be implying that the opposition was a conspiracy from London to
hold back The North, but in reality there were genuine environmental
concerns. And yet it still got built!

There must be plenty of others.

Developing another city on the scale of London - if you could ever get past
the nimby factor - would be fine with me; you're right, it would be a huge
boon to the economy if successful (once again, I think of Dubai).

I'm glad you agree that "It would be fine". But actually, all I am suggesting
is that Birmingham - Manchester - Leeds be made EFFECTIVELY "one city" by
high-speed links. It is quite crazy that the links between them are judged
and prioritised "cross-country".

You included London on its route, so Birmingham would be more likely to
become "one city" with London!

The "gravity model" of traffic is modelled on Newton's gravity
equation and it suggests that traffic between 2 towns is proportional to the
product of the two populations divided by the square of the distance.

A very interesting theory, but a flawed one (and not only because it
fails to include a cost variable).

So, traffic on the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester, near and large
towns is the heaviest in the country, and more than between Birmingham and
London, a rather larger town, but much further away.

ITYF that's got more to fact that the M6 is the ONLY high capacity road
route from Birmingham to Manchester, Liverpool, Scotland etc., whereas
Birmingham to London also has the M40. Similarly there are three rail
routes from London to Birmingham.

It would surely justify the most lavish of Shinkansens.

....to connect it to Humberside :-)

Michael Bell wrote:
wrote:
Michael Bell wrote:
In article , Michael Bell wrote:

snipping matters answered in other posts :-
[snip]
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.

Of course it's all or nothing, but I think it has a lot to do with more
of the higher value work being done in London.

What do you mean by "all or nothing"? And if you think that provincials do
low value work, that shows your prejudices.

Sorry, I really messed that up - I meant to write "of course it's NOT
all or nothing". And because I made that mistake, I can see why you
could mistake my comments about provincials doing low value work for
prejudice.

As I meant to say, it's not all or nothing, and a lot of high value work
is performed in London - there's the financial sector, of course, and a
lot of companies choose to locate their headquarters there. But have you
noticed how little heavy industry remains?

[snip]
phonetic spelling, with Slough, Reading, Greenwich, Islington and of
course London itself - rhymes with "cotton"!

I doubt that rhyme would be acceptable even in doggeral!

Wash your ears out!

That wouldn't help now, as I'm too far away to hear it. But in all the
time I was there I never once heard it pronounced like that! Are you
sure you're not getting it confused with Luton?

[snip]

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.

First you claim their policy is EXACTLY London FIRST, then you claim
it's London Only! Make your mind up!

I can't see your point.

A London FIRST policy would not prevent others from getting what London
can't have - it would only prevent them from getting what London CAN
have. A dog in the manger policy would be London ONLY!

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.

ITYF they are, even though the PTEs don't work exactly the same way as
TfL.

I think the difference is significant.

You are correct, but so is the similarity.

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.

How exactly have they done that? Manchester airport has had another
runway added, despite being far less busy. And while the government are
currently keen on some misguided policies that would keep Heathrow
dominant, they don't involve holding back the development of Northern
airports.

You are simply wrong there.

Am I??? Then can you please explain how they would involve holding back
the development of northern airports?

[snip]
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.

I don't think there's actually a grudge - it's just a resentment that
they're not getting properly funded when the other cities are.

So you agree it exists, if it's not a "grudge", then what is it?

I just told you!

I can't think of a single word for it, and obviously you can't either,
but I can tell you the difference. It is the desire to rectify what they
perceive as a current and ongoing injustice. A grudge is usually taken
to mean the refusal to forgive them for what are percieved as past
injustices, and your accusation of spite and vindictiveness confirms
that this is what you meant. London wants more and is annoyed that
they're not getting it, but there is no malice.

[snip]

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

And what would I be if I deplored it and said "but that costs many
gigaquid that could be spent in a far more useful way" what would I be?

At least you would have made a calculation. But so far, you haven't. What
would it be worth to the country to have another 10 million people doing
the higher-value work that you claim (at top) Londoners are doing? How
much would it cost to reach that state?

You misunderstand the way it works. Not all the work done in London is
high value, and there's an increasing amount of high value work being
done in other parts of the country. Improving transport links would help
to increase that amount, but it would be better to have a whole range of
improvements that benefit the whole country rather than just using one
megaproject with the ridiculous aim of making it all one city.

BTW have you seen Channel 4's "Supercities UK"? First broadcast in 2003
it involved one man's vision of the future of three of England's cities:
The M62 corridor, London to Birmingham, and the South Coast. A few
interesting ideas, and some very silly ones! If you've seen it, I'll let
you decide whether your postings' resemblance to it are a compliment. If
you haven't, I'll let you wonder.

Michael Bell wrote:
wrote:
Michael Bell wrote:
In article , Michael Bell wrote:
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.

Crossrail and Thameslink could benefit London orders of magnitude more
than a few extra stations and travelators.

I proposed a bit more than "a few escalators".

Indeed you did: as I said, you proposed "a few extra stations and
travelators".

I proposed a progamme of creating interchanges at several dozen places, I
only gave a few examples.

So trains would be slowed down slightly for the sake of a few
interchanging passengers, even though in many cases the journey could
easily be made just by interchanging somewhere else. There may or may
not be a net improvement, but there certainly won't be the enormous
benefits of Crossrail.

And what do you mean by "benefittting London"?

Shortening journey times, providing a lot of extra capacity to relieve
the overcrowded Tube, and providing an easier way to get across London.
What more do you want?

My plan would benefit the current residents much more,

Your plan would benefit very few of the current residents much more, and
of those who do benefit, most would only benefit slightly. If 5% of
passengers saved 10 minutes and the rest took 1 minute longer, would you
consider it worthwhile?

and it wouldn't subject them more competition for space.

Not directly (except maybe on the NLL), but indirectly it would because
it would not provide the capacity to meet demand.

Your scheme would Crossrail and Thameslink would bring more jobs
and people to fill them to central London, and benefit "The City".

And the West End. And Croydon (and quite a lot more of Greater London).
And Sussex (and indeed many of the Home Counties).

So, who has the votes? Or who has the political pull?

The answer appears to be "nobody"!

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.
[snip]
There have been many attempts to encourage development in other parts of
the country, not all of them successful. What does "Humberside" mean to
you???

Humberside has failed, but it was conceived at a time when the population of
this country was foreseen as 90 million by 2000. Now our problem is falling
population - and London wants to grab as much of it as possible. (Birth rate
dropped to 1.7children/woman in the early 70s,

Yet they still built the Humber bridge!

and something that has been so
for 30 years is not going to change quickly.

ITYF it already has changed.

Serious population decline is the unspoken fear of government, that's why
the Tories agreed to Labour's plans for childcare, not a very traditional
Tory policy, but what choise is there. They want to go the way of
Scandinavia, with it's slight population increase rather than Italy with
1.1children/woman.)

And fortunately it is going the way of Scandanavia AIUI. Not that
serious population decline's that much of a threat, considering the
number of people who want to migrate to Britain.

Think hard!

But London has received _enormous_ underinvestment for decades

It's been the same everywhere. London has done a little better than the rest
of us.

It's actually been very different everywhere. There was a deliberate
attempt to boost the fortunes of regional areas, and it resulted in the
London population declining until the policy was abolished (IIRC by the
Thatcher government who considered it too expensive). And the growth of
London has brought great benefits, but the infrastructure has not kept
up.

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.


If a business is doing well, it ought to be able to finance its own
expansion. So should a city be able to. But evidently for all London's
wonderfulness, it can't. It has to ask for subsidy. Rather odd.

Rather odd until you consider that the government hold the purse strings
and other cities and rural areas also require subsidy.
[snip]
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"!

I doubt that rhyme would be acceptable even in doggeral!

I don't think you've got the point. The writer was over-familiar with the
spelling of "London" and just couldn't see that it didn't fit even the flimsy
"rules" for spelling in English.

Is this like the thing where they try use the precedent of tough women's
emotions to prove "ghoti" should be prounounced "fish", until it's
pointed out to them that by that logic using other precendents the
entire word should be silent?

(snip)
(Before the war, the LNER built up commuter services from the West Riding
to the sea-side at Scarborough,

Are you sure they were commuter services?

As I understood it at the time, yes.

You were there at the time???

In message , Aidan Stanger
writes

As for London Weighting, that's just part of peoples' wages - it's paid
for by the employers, yet the employers are quite happy to locate
themselves in London, so obviously they think it's worth it.
If London Weighting was stopped, or other places paid the same, I'm sure
the house price differential would fall as less people would be able to
compete for housing stock. Making other cities more attractive.
--
Clive.

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Aidan Stanger wrote:

Michael Bell wrote:
wrote:
Michael Bell wrote:

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.

I don't think there's actually a grudge - it's just a resentment
that they're not getting properly funded when the other cities are.

So you agree it exists, if it's not a "grudge", then what is it?

I just told you!

I can't think of a single word for it

Indignation. Righteous indignation if you can stretch to two.

tom

--
Socialism - straight in the mainline!

In message , Aidan Stanger
writes
You included London on its route, so Birmingham would be more likely to
become "one city" with London!

Just as an aside here from someone with a lot of experience of the
London - Birmingham "corridor".......

I think that one of the reasons that Birmingham has fared so well in the
last two decades with things like the National Exhibition Centre,
National Indoor Arena, International Convention Centre, Symphony Hall,
etc. is that it's convenient for a large proportion of the country
(Northern England, Wales) AND it isn't THAT far from London.

The NEC in particular is so well served by fast trains from Euston
direct to Birmingham International (in is it 85 minutes?) that it's not
that much more hassle to reach than parts of outer London.

There was even a view in the eighties that BHX could have effectively
become London's third airport.

--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

In article , (Huge)
wrote:
Clive Coleman writes:
In message , Aidan Stanger
writes

As for London Weighting, that's just part of peoples' wages - it's paid
for by the employers, yet the employers are quite happy to locate
themselves in London, so obviously they think it's worth it.
If London Weighting was stopped, or other places paid the same, I'm sure
the house price differential would fall as less people would be able to
compete for housing stock. Making other cities more attractive.

I'm not convinced. IME, London Weighting is woefully inadequate.

The effect of increasing it markedly would simply be to fuel the
London and SE housing market and concentrate even more of the
economy on the overheated bit.

You pay over the odds for living in London but you get it back
in terms of being closer to the amenities.

--
http://www.election.demon.co.uk
"The guilty party was the Liberal Democrats and they were hardened offenders,
and coded racism was again in evidence in leaflets distributed in September
1993." - Nigel Copsey, "Contemporary British Fascism", page 62.

"Michael Bell" wrote in message
...
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!
[snipped]

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?

Totally agree with you, except it should be
London-Birmingham-Potteries-Manchester-Leeds-Glasgow-Edinburgh-Newcastle....
..

Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, is more important than its 2nd city,
Edinsmugsboresville, which (due to an accident of history) is now its
'capital'.

Ian Jelf ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

There was even a view in the eighties that BHX could have effectively
become London's third airport.

We had a local minicab back from Heathrow to Chorleywood a few weeks ago,
and the driver was saying that more and more people are using Coventry. It
is, apparently, the same distance from here as both Gatwick and Stansted,
and tends to be cheaper fare, due to the traffic.

In message , Adrian
writes
Ian Jelf ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

There was even a view in the eighties that BHX could have effectively
become London's third airport.

We had a local minicab back from Heathrow to Chorleywood a few weeks ago,
and the driver was saying that more and more people are using Coventry. It
is, apparently, the same distance from here as both Gatwick and Stansted,
and tends to be cheaper fare, due to the traffic.

It is - however- a *very* basic airport from the passengers' point of
view, in no way comparable as an "experience" to Heathrow, Gatwick or
indeed Birmingham.

Of course I accept that the cost rather than other factors can sway
people but having recently had to meet and despatch a group from
Coventry Airport, I can't say I'd be queuing up to use it myself!

(Interesting r e-mail address, incidentally, Adrian!)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk