north south divide ?

O

ohmygodwhathaveyoudone

Joined
9 Apr 2004
Messages
677
Reaction score
0
Location
Lincolnshire
Country
United Kingdom
have just come back from portsmouth/southampton/guildford area after spending 4 days there.i lived there for 12 yrs previous & for the last 3 yrs have been spent up north.
so off i go to pompey for a holiday with the family but had to double back for a funeral @ epsom.
gets to pompey o.k. not really stressed apart from the none existant workmen an the a1 just miles of cones & contraflows :(
next day decides to visit mates in portsmouth,m27.....80-90mph...oh my god NOW i remeber why i left the area for a more relaxed way of commuting :)
it all came back to me ,cars so close to your a rse you could'nt see the no. plate :mad:
followed a caravan doing 70mph being pulled by a mercs estate :eek:
it just went downhill from there,it was tooooooooooo much hassle driving
from a to b @ mental speeds.
btw. they charged me £2.56 for a pint of beer which only costs me £2.00 normally.
 
Sponsored Links
I just hate it when on TV or in the papers people refer to 'up north' as anywhere past London! Have you lot ever heard of Newcastle? :rolleyes:

We're true Northerners. It's like the Arctic bleedin' Circle up here today...

It's cheaper up here, although Newcastle's more expensive than other parts of the North East due to the property rise.
 
Looking at maps I used to think the M25 was a moat, to keep non-Londoners out. In fact, when I moved north of Watford, my first fear was that the air would be too thin to breathe up here. ;)

The north-south divide is definitely there, but not like it was before. It used to be grim up north, now it has its advantages. A mate of mine bought a house with his now wife, in a commuter village near Middlesborough. Despite being rather large, detached, with a garage, a decent garden, hardwood floors and only a couple of years old, it cost little more than the 1-bed flat with monkey-puke yellow walls and tired green carpet in Herts. He was telling me a few weeks back that he and his wife were looking at buying a new house, a 3-storey town house with 7, yes SEVEN bedrooms. Dunno what she has planned for the coming year :LOL:

We no longer have the situation where people in the south earn significantly more than people in the north. With the obvious exception of London: because of the nature of the industries there. So it means people in the north often have a better standard of living. I even investigated the possibility of living 100 miles north and microlighting to work! Doubt the local authorities would like me using the car park as a landing strip.

I'm doing alright up here in the wilderness of Hertfordshire; I am half Silksworth so I grow a hardy winter coat.
 
Sunderland, surely, is the northern capital ?

"...Fog on the Tyne is ... yours all yours !!" ;)

P
 
Sponsored Links
Well, here in Sunny Stockport (sniggers and snorts of derision!), there was an outcry only a year or two ago when one of the locally-fed hostelrys put the price of a pint of bitter up from 98p to 1.01....Seriously!
 
AdamW said:
when I moved north of Watford
Click to expand...

For a few years I worked in Hertfordshire. Talking to the locals I would quite often refer to "Coming up north". On one occaision I was asked "so where do you think the middlands are?"

My logic was, I live in the east (Essex), my daughter lives in the west (Gloucestershire), so the Middlands must lie somewhere in between, say.. around Reading! That puts Hertfordshire firmly up north! Especially the bits where I was working, St. Albans, and Wellwyn-Garden-City are both north of Watford.

Sad thing was, at the time I believed it :oops:
 
I've always believed that where I live (Grantham) is the heart of the "midlands". We sit right on the junction where the A1 (Edinburgh to London) meets the A52 (East coast to West coast).

And I must say, I love it here! I lived down in Brighton for a couple of years, and I have to admit it is a very cool city - but it's just not justifiable paying £600 per month rent for a shabby flat when a really nice place here costs me just £235...
 
securespark said:
....... there was an outcry only a year or two ago....Seriously!
Click to expand...

a) When the sun came 'out' sparkies couldn't understand ... light out = nowt ... sun out = light .......mmmm ;)

b) When the Stockos' realised just how close they were to Scotland :cry: and that the Beatles were Yesterday !! :eek:

P
 
pipme said:
b) When the Stockos' realised just how close they were to Scotland :cry: and that the Beatles were Yesterday !! :eek:

P
Click to expand...

I guess this is a reference to Stockport being in a timewarp, never been myself.

The many times I went to Sunderland as a child, I was always surprised at the prevalence of flared trousers. In 1990. :confused:
 
pipme said:
Sunderland, surely, is the northern capital ?

"...Fog on the Tyne is ... yours all yours !!" ;)

P
Click to expand...

GRRRRRRRRR - sworn enemies!!!!!!! :mad: j/k

There's no fog on the Tyne...just a lot of bridges :D

---------
Newcastle's pretty expensive now...house prices are ridiculous especially in the city centre, although there are some gorgeous apartments etc. The biggest rise in the creative and media industries now is in Newcastle, not London, which accounts for the multiplying Starbucks' and the laptop-carrying 'semi-casual' types - graphic designers (LOL, i.e. myself) It's a nice place to be though. Don't bother with Sunderland - it's smelly. ;)

I live in Darlington - nice place - with my fiance now, I work in Newcastle and my mother still lives there. Our house has more than doubled in value in 3 years - although we have done a lot to it - but we still wouldn't get anywhere near as good a property in even a semi-decent area of Newcastle. And there are some places I just wouldn't stoop to. ;)
 
Aaaaah ya Tackem!

As far as I am aware, most UK cities are quite nice places to live now (I have a few prejudices, but surely it isn't fair to base my whole opinion of Manchester on Oasis ;) ). It is nigh on impossible to buy somewhere to convert into a loft-style apartment in London, but a lot of the other cities still have lots of nice old buildings to develop.

Much as I would love to have some Northern style house prices, I really don't think I would function properly living too far from the motherland :LOL:
 
does not anyone think up north is more laid-back as in not working in the rat race/headless chicken gotta get there,stressed out,"life in the fast lane" way of living ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sponsored Links
Back
Top