Out-thunk
Here’s a puzzle for you: when a “think tank” stops thinking, does it just get called a “tank”? Or a “thunk-tank”? And when they start talking nonsense, does that make them a “drunk tank”? Or do they just “think wank”?
I find myself in the unusual position today of wanting to say something positive about Sunderland, the city which is home to the bitter enemies of my beloved Newcastle United. However, there are times when regional rivalry needs to step aside: when it’s Northerners vs. Southern Wankers.
Apparently, the Conservatives have a think tank (a right-wing think tank: is that a rink-wink-think-tank?) which suggests that some Northern cities (notably Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford) are beyond revival and everyone living there should instead move to Cambridge, or Oxford or something.
the three million affordable new homes planned by the government should be built in London, Oxford and Cambridge to enable people to migrate south [...] People should be told the “reality” to avoid them becoming “trapped” in less prosperous parts of the country. BBC News
I don’t wish to criticise a think-tank made up of leading minds … but as this one plainly isn’t, I’ll jump right in: if someone is living in a deprived area of Sunderland (average house price quarter 4 2007: £74,000), and is struggling to make ends meet because they can’t get a job there, how precisely are they supposed to get the money to move to Oxford (average price June 2008: £282,000)?
Are Policy Exchange suggesting that the government should subsidise everyone in Sunderland to the tune of £210,000 so that they can move? At 200,000 inhabitants, that would cost around £42 billion for Sunderland alone — and I suspect actually regenerating Sunderland would in fact be substantially cheaper…
They’ve also missed something quite significant:
The authors concluded that coastal cities like Liverpool and Sunderland had “lost much of their raison d’etre” with the decline of shippingBBC News
So, perhaps we need to move some of the national things out of London? The Royal Opera House to be based in Bradford? The British Museum to move to Sunderland? After all, these things are seen as national things, so if we’re all paying for them, shouldn’t they be spread around the country a bit? Along with a few more of the government agencies…?
In short, what Policy Exchange is saying is that regeneration policies in the North are failing, and areas like Oxford and Cambridge are much better off. Well, it’s easy to solve that. Just take Government money away from Oxford and Cambridge and give it to Sunderland and Bradford until they are on a level playing field…
What you need to do is to give people in the North something that they can reasonably aspire to. Reduce the unemployment levels. Provide better quality housing; better quality jobs and better quality education.
But of course Policy Exchange are a leading right-wing think tank and (up to about the moment they came up with this crackpot notion) were Cameron’s favourites. So I’m sure they’ve already considered exactly how Oxford and Cambridge would cope if their populations quadrupled overnight if everyone from Bradford, Sunderland and Liverpool did what they said and suddenly turned up on their doorsteps.
Only, the funny thing was, I couldn’t find any mention of this…
Roy Keane and the Drumaville consortium have done more to regenerate Sunderland than successive governments (Labour and Conservative). They’ve given the area hope, simply by investing in the football team, as opposed to the traditional government approach of attempting to paper over the cracks. Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend this: any public money put into football should be used to buy players for Newcastle United only.
But Sunderland, Bradford and Liverpool need serious investment. Many other places in the North also need investment. That’s the real failing of Policy Exchange: they were right to spot that regeneration policies are failing, but rather than solve the problem by actually providing the necessary investment, the right-wing knee-jerk reaction is simply to pull out and leave the northern ghettos to fend for themselves (”after all, it’s not like they vote for us anyway…”).
If your regeneration policies are failing, perhaps it’s time to revise your regeneration policies, rather than just give up? But then again, if Policy Exchange are serious in thinking that things which fail should simply be abandoned and left to rot, well … I’ll let you finish that one.
Hello. I am 
Not sure I agree with you there, not that I agree with the report either, I feel that some areas are failing, and the thing is the areas which are failing are those which have for years. I as you know grew up in Sunderland, and some of the most deprived areas when I grew up, were the same as the most deprived areas of 100 years previous (from local history books), and in the years since I have left despite the investment of millions into these areas they remain the same today.
There is a report here detailing the effect of RDA’s and regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the conclusions the numbers are all from official government published figures.
I think investment and reliance on external investment is a bad thing, and pouring money money into an area is similar to pouring welfare money into an individual, it breeds reliance, and destroys the requirement to do things for yourself.
Growing up I always felt I would need to leave the North East to achieve everything I wanted, I have been luck thus far to have been able to live and work in my native North East, but I still feel to move on long term my best pospecs lie away from here.
Big business will always want to be centralised and London is that place attempting to attract businesses to failing areas has not worked so maybe lowering the barrier to moving to where businesses are is not such a bad thing.
Hmmmm… I saw this report elsewhere - but wanted to comment on your phrase “Northerners vs. Southern Wankers.”, at which point I nearly stopped reading. “Southern Wankers”? Isn’t it really just ‘Wankers’ (or ‘Southern Tory Wankers’ at the very least)? A bit like using the term ‘Robbing Polish Bastards’, when you actually mean ‘Robbing bastards’. I always try to avoid wholesale generalisations, and the phrase ‘Southern Wankers’ smacks of that.
‘Regional’ rivalry is generally destructive regardless of the distances involved - whether it’s in a different part of town, a different county or a different part of the world.
Mike: you’ve been living darn sarf too long, mate
I think ‘Southern Wankers’ is fine — the problem is you’re generalising it, not me. You’re taking it to mean ‘all southerners are wankers’ as opposed to ‘this specific group of southerners, who are wankers’. I would have thought it was fairly obvious it was the think tank I was being critical of…
Do they actually sit in a big tank of water when doing their thinking? That could explain why they think this is a good policy to suggest - water in the ear can do funny things to your brain.
I’m a West Yorkshire lad living in Gloucestershire and you couldn’t pay me enough to live anywhere near London, Oxford or Cambridge! Bollocks to ‘em.