Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford: "beyond revival" - "residents should move south"
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- Start date
dennisr
the acceptable face
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
Something I can agree with him on, then.
The Black Hand
Unclean
Roadkill
smash me pastie luv Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: oh don't ask
Posts: 19,257
Quote:
Originally Posted by Attica
This has fucked the so called 'Tory revival in the North'.
ROADKILL: Well, except that the party are already trying to dissociate themseles from the report...
Stop being so fekking dry - you'll end up like those ultra left wankers next. The thing is - MUD does stick
smash me pastie luv Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: oh don't ask
Posts: 19,257
Quote:
Originally Posted by Attica
This has fucked the so called 'Tory revival in the North'.
ROADKILL: Well, except that the party are already trying to dissociate themseles from the report...
Stop being so fekking dry - you'll end up like those ultra left wankers next. The thing is - MUD does stick
Kanda
Diving wanker
The thing is - MUD does stick
Yes, this is why some will always think you're a bit of a twat
Yeah Trev.... but maybe as they pass thru posh places in yorkshire and cheshire they could stop off and murder a few posh northern twats as well.
The Black Hand
Unclean
The Black Hand
Unclean
Our twats are better than your twats.
The Black Hand
Unclean
Out of interest, what am I meant to have said which is so contraversial?Yes, this is why some will always think you're a bit of a twat
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Sums it up for me.
I moved south - its not all its cracked up to be
pompey to london is north innit
Didn't a similar think tank report on the congestion in Oxford last year which is just above Bath and equates to smoking 46 fags a day? I imagine that they could do without the extra populace. At the same time who could afford a house in the South East? Scousers will have to flog the 4 bed victorian villa for a bedsit in Hackney. Far from ideal.
I was born and lived around london all my life but no way will i write off people from the north etc .the people of the north who invented and manufactured some of the worlds greatest things can rebuild their towns and cities maybe not in five minutes ,but as they say rome wern't built in a day.what a bunch of prize arseholes these commitee wally's are
Right-wing London-based 'think tank' says "Fuck the North, let's keep all the money in the south-east". Not the greatest surprise really. I really liked the bit about how the money spent in Liverpool would have been better spent on plasma TVs. Yeah,when i was at the Gustav Klimt exhibition the other week all i could think was 'very nice but i wish i was watching big brother in widescreen'. 
And some of us really like the superlambananas.
And some of us really like the superlambananas.
dennisr
the acceptable face
pompey to london is north innit
The late 80s version of this spin was 'get on your bike' - so I left the failed cities of 'the north' for germany and spain.
its a very slightly cleverer angle (with emphesis on the 'very slightly') this time - the think tank is not officially blaming the 'lazy northerners', officially its the 'policy makers who failed these folk'. Its still the 'locals' who have to pay the price though - be uprooted or 'fail' - while the real cause of destruction of industry, communities, work and life opportunities etc are covered up. The workers will "only have themselves to blame" for not moving in this version of newspeak.
I live in a failed city (with plenty of pockets of hopelessness and concentrations of unemployment and low wages) now. north schmorth.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
It is a copout of civic responsibility to say that a city is beyond revival and that people should move.
Some people undoubtedly can and probably are already moving but many many people cannot move for various reasons, these then are those that are left behind in a city without hope!
What hope for a future for them then?
When the coal industry went from South Wales, significant effort was put into attracting new industry to provide jobs for the area and there is now a significant electronics industry in South Wales which is a major employer. No decision was made to dump the area, to let it decline further.
The same should be the case for these cities, they need dooers not talkers, optimistic civic leaders not doom mongers.
Some people undoubtedly can and probably are already moving but many many people cannot move for various reasons, these then are those that are left behind in a city without hope!
What hope for a future for them then?
When the coal industry went from South Wales, significant effort was put into attracting new industry to provide jobs for the area and there is now a significant electronics industry in South Wales which is a major employer. No decision was made to dump the area, to let it decline further.
The same should be the case for these cities, they need dooers not talkers, optimistic civic leaders not doom mongers.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
I don't know how Cameron has the cheek to claim that he has no connection with Policy Exchange. He, along with his pals, Osborne and Gove, were its leading lights before they took over the front bench.
Typical blinkered thinking from a Tory think tank.
Typical blinkered thinking from a Tory think tank.
It's great if you're a tourist, but that's not exactly the whole story.
_angel_
.
I have lived there for three years.
But not during 2008, when the Capital of Culture is actually on? All I'm saying is that the CoC is a crock of shit and Liverpool city council are using it as a means of covering up just how shit a state Liverpool is in.
Right wing people always back the idea that people should move to work though....Asa many of them prove over and over again in the debates on here about immigration.
They think that those who can should move and those who cant should be left to rot.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
This is a good idea, it's quite interesting and appears to be advocating a withdrawal of central government control over local councils and an effective devolution of power towards local government answerable to locals rather than ministers.
So far it's merely saying that regeneration is failing and something needs to be done. It recommends decentralisation, which is something I have always supported.
Also, the thing about moving to London, is actually (according to page 18) the subtext of what they believe government policy, based on a speech by Stephen Timms, actually amounts to. So far their support is pretty slim for this, although the context seems so far to be that the regions need to learn from London and become a collection of communities rather than small outlying singular communities.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
Page 24 and 25 lay it out, and are quite interesting.
Accept the reality of economic
geography
A successful regeneration policy has to start
by accepting the realities of economic
geography, for it is at least as hard to buck
geography as it is to buck the market.
Spatial economics, the study of the economics
of geographical dispersion and
agglomeration, advances strong theoretical
arguments, and empirical evidence for the
existence of optimal locations for economic
activity and optimal sizes for cities, both
of which vary in time and place. It also
demonstrates how planners can use price
signals to guide their decisions so that a
country ends up in a position closer to the
optimal level. A country that uses such
information effectively will be richer than
one that does not. We look first at what
economic geography can teach us about
optimal locations, before turning to optimal
city sizes.
The existence of optimal locations for
economic activity is at one level very obvious:
it is easy to sell sandwiches in a busy
area with lots of workers or tourists looking
for something to eat, just as it is easy to
sell beach mats at the beach. What is perhaps
less obvious is that there are optimal
locations for firms that at first sight might
not be expected to have an optimal location.
In fact all firms have an optimal location.
They might want to be near workers
with the relevant skills and aptitudes.
Many want to be near their customers,
either directly or via good transport links.
Others need to be able to export the product
that they make or to import components.
Finally, firms prefer to locate next to
other firms in the same industry. Partly this
is so that they can attract staff from their
rivals, but partly it is because knowledge
spillovers within a cluster of firms make
them all more competitive. For all these
reasons many firms prefer to be in or near
major centres of population, and to be well
connected to other centres of population.
That gives them access both to staff, to
customers and to knowledge.
Today Britain trades with Europe more
than ever before. This gives the South East
an advantage. Aviation has become more
important over time, for both goods transport
and passenger travel, so locations near
airports, particularly airports that offer a
wide range of destinations, have become
more attractive, again favouring the South
East. Finally, Britain has become a roadbased
economy, favouring places in the
middle of Britain that are well connected
to motorway networks. Some disadvantages
of geography would be prohibitively
expensive to overcome. It would be possible,
for example, for the Government to
build an airport next to Hull, and subsidise
flights to and from Hull to ensure that it is
as well-connected as London. But such a
policy would be economic as well as environmental
folly. We have to accept that
some locations make more sense than others
and that, although infrastructure can be
improved, there are places that geographical
reality dictates will never be well-connected.
That does not mean such places are
doomed or that they should be abolished.
But it does mean that the only way they
will attract jobs is by offering a lower cost
24
of doing business in compensation for
their lower connectability. This happens to
some extent already: rents are lower, for
example. But rents make up only a small
proportion of total costs and differences in
regional employment rates and regional
wages show us that lower rents in less wellconnected
places are insufficient to ensure
high levels of employment. In reality, the
only cost of production that accounts for a
sufficiently large share of total costs, and
which can vary place by place, is labour
costs. As a result, the only way towns and
cities that are less well connected, and
which the realities of physical geography
dictate will remain less well-connected, can
compete to attract firms is to accept lower
wages.
That is a brutal message, but it is an
honest one. When something is true, nothing
can be gained by hiding it. The message
for people living in cities that are less
well-connected is simple and apparently
bleak: if you remain where you are, then
your chances of being unemployed are
higher and your wages will be lower than if
you move to a place that is better located
for the modern economy. It is worth being
clear about the different impact of these
two effects. Skilled workers are not unemployed
in large numbers anywhere in
Britain, for them the issue is one of wages.
In places that are economically less welllocated
they may find that the opportunities
are not as well-matched to their skills
as they would be in a more successful
region, and that wages are generally lower.
As economists would say, the skilled labour
market clears, but it does so at a lower
wage. For unskilled workers the issue is
one of unemployment, because unemployment
benefits and minimum wages place a
floor on wages. As a result we find that
unemployment of those with low or no
skills is substantially higher in less-wellconnected
cities. This is a market that does
not clear and some people who would genuinely
like to work remain unemployed.
This matters because it tells us that
those who are worst affected by poor economic
locations are those with low-skill
levels. Those with higher skills have a
greater ability to move because their wages
are sufficient to allow them to move to
more prosperous regions. Those with higher
skills are compensated for their lower
wages by a lower cost of living: housing, in
particular, is much cheaper in our regeneration
cities than either in Britain as a
whole, or in our most successful towns. If
those with skills can find a reasonable job,
their standard of living will be only a little
lower. If it were much lower, then they
would move. But for the low skilled the
story is not the same because unemployment
is much more likely in areas that are
not well connected, and those with low
skills find it hardest to move.
Unemployment is not only a source of
poverty; it is also a source of unhappiness
over and above the unhappiness that comes
from poverty. The evidence shows that
those who want to work do not get used to
unemployment, on the contrary, the pain
of unemployment remains real over time.21
That some areas are innately hard to
connect is not contentious. The difficulty
of connecting the middle of the Lake
District, or the Highlands of Scotland
explains why so few people live there: these
places, which are outstandingly beautiful,
are not good locations for business and
never have been. Those who choose to live
there do so because they offer other attractions.
What may be contentious is to state that
some of Britain’s existing towns and cities
are poorly located for modern business.
This stems from two interlocking factors:
that Britain urbanised first and that the
optimal location for business has changed
more in Britain than elsewhere. This combination
means that our economic geography
is now uniquely poor.
Accept the reality of economic
geography
A successful regeneration policy has to start
by accepting the realities of economic
geography, for it is at least as hard to buck
geography as it is to buck the market.
Spatial economics, the study of the economics
of geographical dispersion and
agglomeration, advances strong theoretical
arguments, and empirical evidence for the
existence of optimal locations for economic
activity and optimal sizes for cities, both
of which vary in time and place. It also
demonstrates how planners can use price
signals to guide their decisions so that a
country ends up in a position closer to the
optimal level. A country that uses such
information effectively will be richer than
one that does not. We look first at what
economic geography can teach us about
optimal locations, before turning to optimal
city sizes.
The existence of optimal locations for
economic activity is at one level very obvious:
it is easy to sell sandwiches in a busy
area with lots of workers or tourists looking
for something to eat, just as it is easy to
sell beach mats at the beach. What is perhaps
less obvious is that there are optimal
locations for firms that at first sight might
not be expected to have an optimal location.
In fact all firms have an optimal location.
They might want to be near workers
with the relevant skills and aptitudes.
Many want to be near their customers,
either directly or via good transport links.
Others need to be able to export the product
that they make or to import components.
Finally, firms prefer to locate next to
other firms in the same industry. Partly this
is so that they can attract staff from their
rivals, but partly it is because knowledge
spillovers within a cluster of firms make
them all more competitive. For all these
reasons many firms prefer to be in or near
major centres of population, and to be well
connected to other centres of population.
That gives them access both to staff, to
customers and to knowledge.
Today Britain trades with Europe more
than ever before. This gives the South East
an advantage. Aviation has become more
important over time, for both goods transport
and passenger travel, so locations near
airports, particularly airports that offer a
wide range of destinations, have become
more attractive, again favouring the South
East. Finally, Britain has become a roadbased
economy, favouring places in the
middle of Britain that are well connected
to motorway networks. Some disadvantages
of geography would be prohibitively
expensive to overcome. It would be possible,
for example, for the Government to
build an airport next to Hull, and subsidise
flights to and from Hull to ensure that it is
as well-connected as London. But such a
policy would be economic as well as environmental
folly. We have to accept that
some locations make more sense than others
and that, although infrastructure can be
improved, there are places that geographical
reality dictates will never be well-connected.
That does not mean such places are
doomed or that they should be abolished.
But it does mean that the only way they
will attract jobs is by offering a lower cost
24
of doing business in compensation for
their lower connectability. This happens to
some extent already: rents are lower, for
example. But rents make up only a small
proportion of total costs and differences in
regional employment rates and regional
wages show us that lower rents in less wellconnected
places are insufficient to ensure
high levels of employment. In reality, the
only cost of production that accounts for a
sufficiently large share of total costs, and
which can vary place by place, is labour
costs. As a result, the only way towns and
cities that are less well connected, and
which the realities of physical geography
dictate will remain less well-connected, can
compete to attract firms is to accept lower
wages.
That is a brutal message, but it is an
honest one. When something is true, nothing
can be gained by hiding it. The message
for people living in cities that are less
well-connected is simple and apparently
bleak: if you remain where you are, then
your chances of being unemployed are
higher and your wages will be lower than if
you move to a place that is better located
for the modern economy. It is worth being
clear about the different impact of these
two effects. Skilled workers are not unemployed
in large numbers anywhere in
Britain, for them the issue is one of wages.
In places that are economically less welllocated
they may find that the opportunities
are not as well-matched to their skills
as they would be in a more successful
region, and that wages are generally lower.
As economists would say, the skilled labour
market clears, but it does so at a lower
wage. For unskilled workers the issue is
one of unemployment, because unemployment
benefits and minimum wages place a
floor on wages. As a result we find that
unemployment of those with low or no
skills is substantially higher in less-wellconnected
cities. This is a market that does
not clear and some people who would genuinely
like to work remain unemployed.
This matters because it tells us that
those who are worst affected by poor economic
locations are those with low-skill
levels. Those with higher skills have a
greater ability to move because their wages
are sufficient to allow them to move to
more prosperous regions. Those with higher
skills are compensated for their lower
wages by a lower cost of living: housing, in
particular, is much cheaper in our regeneration
cities than either in Britain as a
whole, or in our most successful towns. If
those with skills can find a reasonable job,
their standard of living will be only a little
lower. If it were much lower, then they
would move. But for the low skilled the
story is not the same because unemployment
is much more likely in areas that are
not well connected, and those with low
skills find it hardest to move.
Unemployment is not only a source of
poverty; it is also a source of unhappiness
over and above the unhappiness that comes
from poverty. The evidence shows that
those who want to work do not get used to
unemployment, on the contrary, the pain
of unemployment remains real over time.21
That some areas are innately hard to
connect is not contentious. The difficulty
of connecting the middle of the Lake
District, or the Highlands of Scotland
explains why so few people live there: these
places, which are outstandingly beautiful,
are not good locations for business and
never have been. Those who choose to live
there do so because they offer other attractions.
What may be contentious is to state that
some of Britain’s existing towns and cities
are poorly located for modern business.
This stems from two interlocking factors:
that Britain urbanised first and that the
optimal location for business has changed
more in Britain than elsewhere. This combination
means that our economic geography
is now uniquely poor.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
Thoughts on this exceprt anyone?
Box 1: Sunderland – a case study of the limits of regeneration
Sunderland lies at the mouth of the River Wear in North East England, 13 miles southeast of Newcastle.
Between 1850 and 1950, Sunderland was the “largest shipbuilding town in the world”.27 In 1900 shipbuilding
employed over 12,000 men, a third of the town’s adult population, and the city built more
than a quarter of Britain’s ships during the Second World War. But shipbuilding, especially non-military
vessels, proved to have little future anywhere in Britain after 1945, and the last Sunderland shipyard
closed in 1988. Sunderland is also part of the wider Durham coalfield, which declined at a similar
time. Vaux Breweries closed in 1999 after more than 100 years of brewing, and commercial glass
making has recently ceased in Sunderland, after more than a century as a major producer.28
Sunderland has received much regeneration funding, but the most interesting aspect of the city
from the point of view of regeneration is the arrival of the Nissan car plant in 1986.
The plant was created on a 300-hectare, greenfield site on the outskirts of Sunderland, sold to
Nissan at agricultural prices. Opened in 1986, it has grown steadily adding engine assembly in 1990,
moving to two-model assembly in 1992, three-model in 2000 and four-model in 2006. Nissan
recently announced that it would move to three-shift production, meaning that the plant would run
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
After an investment of £2 billion in the last two decades, it is now Britain’s biggest car plant by
both output and exports, and on any measure is a major success. Once the move to three-shift working
is completed, it will directly employ about 5,000 people.29 Application levels are high when
vacancies occur.30
Not only does Nissan provide jobs, but it has also attracted other firms to the area. Sunderland
City Council reports that there are 240 Nissan suppliers in the area, including major automotive
firms such as the French company Valeo and the US firm TRW Automotive. A total of 12,000 people
work in the automotive sector.31
And yet for all this, Sunderland remains poor. With gross value added per person at 16 per cent
below the UK average, it is in the poorer half of our regeneration towns sample. A recent Joseph
Rowntree Foundation study found that the majority of the population was poor, and numbers had
increased over time.32
The sheer scale of the problems that Sunderland confronts despite a success such as Nissan should
give us pause for thought. If direct investment of £2 billion, a plant employing 5,000 directly and a
further 7,000 indirectly, cannot revitalise the city, we need to ask whether it can reach the national
average level of GVA, wages and living standards while remaining its current size.
Sunderland suffers from very poor economic geography. It is a long way from most places. It is
not somewhere that outsiders consider a desirable place to live. Roy Keane, Sunderland Football
Club’s manager, commented on the difficulty of attracting good players to the Premiership club
despite offering equivalent wages to clubs in the South: “I find it surprising that geography seems to
play such a big part … Retire at 35 or 36, you can live wherever you bloody well like – London,
Monaco, wherever – and any half-decent footballer will be a multimillionaire anyway. Why is there
such a big attraction with London? It would be different if it was Chelsea, Arsenal or maybe
Tottenham, but when they go to a smaller club just because it’s in London, then it’s clearly because
of the shops.”33
In terms of market potential, we have already noted that being on the coast is disadvantageous.
Nearby Newcastle is a mixed blessing: it does increase the market potential, but it is also a rival.
Indeed, rather like Bradford to Leeds, Sunderland sits in Newcastle’s shadow. Although Sunderland
is the larger city, Newcastle is the better connected. Newcastle has the M1/A1, the mainline rail
route, and the airport. The Tyne and Wear metro is also much more extensive in Newcastle than in
Sunderland, and although the metro connects Sunderland directly to the airport, it takes an hour to
cover the 16 miles. And Newcastle is more affluent, with GVA 11 per cent above that of Sunderland.
Those who want to paint a more optimistic future will point to recent innovations. For example,
Sunderland now has direct trains from London. But there are only three a day, a tenth of the number
to nearby Newcastle. And they are much slower. There are not that many people who wish to
travel to Sunderland from London, and therefore the train stops at many intermediate stations to
pick up additional passengers. The result is that the 08:04 train from London to Sunderland takes
three quarters of an hour longer than the equivalent train to nearby Newcastle. It is slower to take
the direct train to Sunderland than to take the train to Newcastle, walk to the metro stop, and take
the metro to Sunderland. By that time the Newcastle train will have reached Scotland. In terms of
connectivity to London, Sunderland is not so much south of Newcastle, as north of Berwick. But in
terms of reaching Edinburgh, Sunderland is as far south as Darlington. In short, the city is isolated.
Sunderland has a severe problem with its skills base, particularly compared to nearby Newcastle.
This is not a problem with the schools: Sunderland and Newcastle schools perform equally at GCSE
level. But local people with skills are more likely to leave Sunderland than Newcastle, and outsiders
with skills are more likely to move to Newcastle than to Sunderland. The result is that Newcastle has
75 per cent more people with degree level skills than Sunderland, but Sunderland has 15 per cent
more people without any qualifications at all.34
Sunderland sits in Newcastle’s shadow, and Newcastle’s better connectivity and path dependency
makes it hard to imagine any way for Sunderland to escape. Indeed, if anything Sunderland has been
losing high-skilled private sector employment, as we can see even in Nissan’s case. Initially, Nissan
Technical Centre Europe was located in Sunderland, but this moved to Cranfield, Bedfordshire, in
the 1990s, to the heart of the British motor industry research zone. Nissan’s design studios are in
London, again, close to those of other manufacturers, such as Ford. Some of the middle-skilled white
collar jobs have left Sunderland as well: in 2003, much of the purchasing department relocated again
to Cranfield, and in 2005 parts of finance moved to Budapest. This separation of production from
higher value added jobs is very much in line with global economic geography trends, and means that
a large manufacturing plant may not generate highly paid jobs in its vicinity.35
The evidence strongly suggests that there is next to no chance of people in Sunderland having the
same opportunities as the people of Birmingham or Portsmouth, let alone the same chances as those
in London or Oxford. It is time to stop pretending that there is a bright future for Sunderland and
ask ourselves instead what we need to do to offer people in Sunderland better prospects.
Box 1: Sunderland – a case study of the limits of regeneration
Sunderland lies at the mouth of the River Wear in North East England, 13 miles southeast of Newcastle.
Between 1850 and 1950, Sunderland was the “largest shipbuilding town in the world”.27 In 1900 shipbuilding
employed over 12,000 men, a third of the town’s adult population, and the city built more
than a quarter of Britain’s ships during the Second World War. But shipbuilding, especially non-military
vessels, proved to have little future anywhere in Britain after 1945, and the last Sunderland shipyard
closed in 1988. Sunderland is also part of the wider Durham coalfield, which declined at a similar
time. Vaux Breweries closed in 1999 after more than 100 years of brewing, and commercial glass
making has recently ceased in Sunderland, after more than a century as a major producer.28
Sunderland has received much regeneration funding, but the most interesting aspect of the city
from the point of view of regeneration is the arrival of the Nissan car plant in 1986.
The plant was created on a 300-hectare, greenfield site on the outskirts of Sunderland, sold to
Nissan at agricultural prices. Opened in 1986, it has grown steadily adding engine assembly in 1990,
moving to two-model assembly in 1992, three-model in 2000 and four-model in 2006. Nissan
recently announced that it would move to three-shift production, meaning that the plant would run
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
After an investment of £2 billion in the last two decades, it is now Britain’s biggest car plant by
both output and exports, and on any measure is a major success. Once the move to three-shift working
is completed, it will directly employ about 5,000 people.29 Application levels are high when
vacancies occur.30
Not only does Nissan provide jobs, but it has also attracted other firms to the area. Sunderland
City Council reports that there are 240 Nissan suppliers in the area, including major automotive
firms such as the French company Valeo and the US firm TRW Automotive. A total of 12,000 people
work in the automotive sector.31
And yet for all this, Sunderland remains poor. With gross value added per person at 16 per cent
below the UK average, it is in the poorer half of our regeneration towns sample. A recent Joseph
Rowntree Foundation study found that the majority of the population was poor, and numbers had
increased over time.32
The sheer scale of the problems that Sunderland confronts despite a success such as Nissan should
give us pause for thought. If direct investment of £2 billion, a plant employing 5,000 directly and a
further 7,000 indirectly, cannot revitalise the city, we need to ask whether it can reach the national
average level of GVA, wages and living standards while remaining its current size.
Sunderland suffers from very poor economic geography. It is a long way from most places. It is
not somewhere that outsiders consider a desirable place to live. Roy Keane, Sunderland Football
Club’s manager, commented on the difficulty of attracting good players to the Premiership club
despite offering equivalent wages to clubs in the South: “I find it surprising that geography seems to
play such a big part … Retire at 35 or 36, you can live wherever you bloody well like – London,
Monaco, wherever – and any half-decent footballer will be a multimillionaire anyway. Why is there
such a big attraction with London? It would be different if it was Chelsea, Arsenal or maybe
Tottenham, but when they go to a smaller club just because it’s in London, then it’s clearly because
of the shops.”33
In terms of market potential, we have already noted that being on the coast is disadvantageous.
Nearby Newcastle is a mixed blessing: it does increase the market potential, but it is also a rival.
Indeed, rather like Bradford to Leeds, Sunderland sits in Newcastle’s shadow. Although Sunderland
is the larger city, Newcastle is the better connected. Newcastle has the M1/A1, the mainline rail
route, and the airport. The Tyne and Wear metro is also much more extensive in Newcastle than in
Sunderland, and although the metro connects Sunderland directly to the airport, it takes an hour to
cover the 16 miles. And Newcastle is more affluent, with GVA 11 per cent above that of Sunderland.
Those who want to paint a more optimistic future will point to recent innovations. For example,
Sunderland now has direct trains from London. But there are only three a day, a tenth of the number
to nearby Newcastle. And they are much slower. There are not that many people who wish to
travel to Sunderland from London, and therefore the train stops at many intermediate stations to
pick up additional passengers. The result is that the 08:04 train from London to Sunderland takes
three quarters of an hour longer than the equivalent train to nearby Newcastle. It is slower to take
the direct train to Sunderland than to take the train to Newcastle, walk to the metro stop, and take
the metro to Sunderland. By that time the Newcastle train will have reached Scotland. In terms of
connectivity to London, Sunderland is not so much south of Newcastle, as north of Berwick. But in
terms of reaching Edinburgh, Sunderland is as far south as Darlington. In short, the city is isolated.
Sunderland has a severe problem with its skills base, particularly compared to nearby Newcastle.
This is not a problem with the schools: Sunderland and Newcastle schools perform equally at GCSE
level. But local people with skills are more likely to leave Sunderland than Newcastle, and outsiders
with skills are more likely to move to Newcastle than to Sunderland. The result is that Newcastle has
75 per cent more people with degree level skills than Sunderland, but Sunderland has 15 per cent
more people without any qualifications at all.34
Sunderland sits in Newcastle’s shadow, and Newcastle’s better connectivity and path dependency
makes it hard to imagine any way for Sunderland to escape. Indeed, if anything Sunderland has been
losing high-skilled private sector employment, as we can see even in Nissan’s case. Initially, Nissan
Technical Centre Europe was located in Sunderland, but this moved to Cranfield, Bedfordshire, in
the 1990s, to the heart of the British motor industry research zone. Nissan’s design studios are in
London, again, close to those of other manufacturers, such as Ford. Some of the middle-skilled white
collar jobs have left Sunderland as well: in 2003, much of the purchasing department relocated again
to Cranfield, and in 2005 parts of finance moved to Budapest. This separation of production from
higher value added jobs is very much in line with global economic geography trends, and means that
a large manufacturing plant may not generate highly paid jobs in its vicinity.35
The evidence strongly suggests that there is next to no chance of people in Sunderland having the
same opportunities as the people of Birmingham or Portsmouth, let alone the same chances as those
in London or Oxford. It is time to stop pretending that there is a bright future for Sunderland and
ask ourselves instead what we need to do to offer people in Sunderland better prospects.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
So teh case basically is that, due to spatial economics, certain parts of the country simply will not bring in the investment needed to make the area an economic success, so why should the people not move to where they will be richer and have access to better jobs?
It's a brutally honest argument. It's hard to imagine anyone pro-capitalism or capitalism neutral being able to find a convincing argument against it.
It's a brutally honest argument. It's hard to imagine anyone pro-capitalism or capitalism neutral being able to find a convincing argument against it.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
Do they stay in Bradford though?
I think the case is that too many leave because they can make money elsewhere, so that the companies won't come in the first place in order that an environment can be created where the graduates stay!
How do we get companies to come to the North and create centres of specialisation? Do we pay them to? I'm not sure I like the idea of spending public money on bribing companies. But if that regenerates poor areas then perhaps it's worth it?
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
Interesting. By page 35 the report is advocating a removal of as much industrial and warehouse land from London and the GL area, to be replaced by housing. The idea is that London can't get enough housing and there are plenty of jobs to replace the ones lost, whilst providing more housing for those who want to move to the London economic area. On the other hand, the industrial / warehousing land moves to where land is cheaper outside london, and brings jobs to areas that need them more. It explains that "It is truly bizarre that a
country wanting at least some jobs migrate
to less prosperous areas has devised a planning
system that subsidises land-hungry
firms to remain in more prosperous areas." and provides some figures to show it.
country wanting at least some jobs migrate
to less prosperous areas has devised a planning
system that subsidises land-hungry
firms to remain in more prosperous areas." and provides some figures to show it.
Be good if more govt agencies and charities moved out of london. A lot of charities spend a fortune on plush london headquarters. A few govt agencies have already moved but many more could. Private companies will follow where the money goes.
But lets not forget that London also has the areas with the highest unemployment in England.
Kanda
Diving wanker
Isn't this what happened with call centres and such years ago? But now, with the technology available it's cheaper to setup in somewhere like India?
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