Him wrote:
What the North (and the rest of the country) needs is better infrastructure. We need the cities (major and minor) far better interconnected by road, rail, high speed internet etc alongside more local responsibility & decision making as to where money goes.
The North in particular is crying out for some mid to high end technology/manufacturing so that talented people don't have to move down south to find the better jobs.
There are good jobs in the north. Graphine technology is currently putting Manchester on the map and both Manchester and Leeds have very strong digital, legal and financial economies.
The problem is that the infrastructure is very poor. Rail in the north still involves a crowded 3 carriage pacer train. It currently takes a hour to travel between the two biggest cities in the north, even though they are just 40 miles away. The M62 between Ainley Top and Gildersome is more congested than the M25 and inner-city transport is laughable.
Take somewhere like Teeside as an example - one of the most deprived areas of the country. Geographically, it's hardly a million miles away from Newcastle, which is doing OK for itself. It stands to reason therefore that Teeside could easily provide a labour force for Newcastle - until you look at the rail network.
There is one direct train an hour between Middlesbrough or Stockton and Newcastle. That train takes more than one hour and a season ticket costs around £230 a month - roughly one week at NMW. There is therefore little incentive for the people of Teeside to commute to where work is, which leads to the area struggling.
People will always move to where there is work so, if we make an assumption that people are prepared to commute by an arbitrary amount (let's say up to 45 mins each way) and prepared to pay an arbitrary amount to commute, you have two options:
Option 1 is to cram as many people into a 45 minute radius around major employment hubs as you possibly can. That creates all sorts if infrastructure issues on housing, schools, hospitals, etc, and it seriously harms the towns and cities that these people leave.
Option 2 is to increase the number of places that fall within this 45 minute radius. You do this by improving rail links to make them more frequent, faster, more affordable and capable of carrying more people. You can also do this by improving the road networks and by improving accessibility to infrastructure such as high speed internet, negating the need for as many people to move around in the first place.
I know which one I prefer.
