
Every paper loves a regional, North-South-divide story. They usually provide a great opportunity to reinforce stereotypes and mock up pictures involving flat caps and whippets – or City boys and flash cars.
This report from the Policy Exchange, then, was a real Godsend. The Tory-backed think-tank claims that many of the UK's Northern towns – notably Sunderland, Blackpool, Liverpool and my hometown Bradford – are in irredeemable decline and ought to be abandoned:
"Many of Britain's towns and cities have failed – and been failed by policy makers for too long. It is better to tell uncomfortable truths than to continue to claim that if we carry on as we are then things will turn out well. Just as we can't buck the market, so we can't buck economic geography either.”
I simply love the way the Daily Mail’s picture desk has illustrated this: juxtaposing Oxford’s dreaming spires in the sunshine with a desolate, terraced street in Liverpool.
By that amazing logic, compare and contrast these pictures:
A London tower block (South) and a wintry Yorkshire Dales (North). Which would you rather abandon?
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