Uhggg Divide and Conquer hits MSN

[Disco_Destroyer]

Is it not that the Sith Lords are born of hate?

http://news.uk.msn.com/a_disunited_kingdom.aspx

Why there's a new north-south divide
You'd be forgiven for thinking every drop of water had disappeared from the living rooms of South Yorkshire.

As far as much of the national press and TV are concerned, last month's devastating floods are yesterday's news. The rain has come and gone. Summer has returned, and so have the good times: a British player winning something at Wimbledon, a musical tribute to Princess Diana, the Tour de France on UK soil, and an amusing spat involving the Queen.

Each of which, of course, took place in the south east of England, far far away from the ravaged north. Convenient, that.

But hey, we're told, who cares? The news isn't showing any more pictures of people's possessions floating down the street or folks having to sleep on camp beds in leisure centres, so presumably it's all OK there now. If the Prince of Wales has even thought it safe enough to take a look, wearing his best shoes and all, clearly everything's back to normal. Why, it might even be worth planning that holiday in Scarborough after all.


A tiny leak in the roof

The speed at which the UK media grasped and then dropped the story of June's weather chaos has been striking.

National media, mind; regional newspapers, radio and TV continue to report doggedly on the enormous amount of work still to be done in restoring local communities and rebuilding shattered houses.

It's a pretty safe bet, however, that had the same kind of damage been wreaked upon the swish upmarket residences of, say, the London boroughs of Hammersmith, Chelsea and Fulham, the floods would still be headline news. If Wimbledon had been flooded, or the Tour de France diverted, or - heaven help us - the Queen even put at the merest of inconvenience, perhaps from a tiny leak in the roof of one of the 600 rooms at Buckingham Palace, we would be hearing about it day after day, hour after hour, relentlessly.

Similarly, when two men tried to drive a blazing jeep into Glasgow Airport a couple of weeks ago, coverage of the incident often sounded as if the attack had happened in some distant third world country, talking of 'confused locals', of having themselves 'only just been able to make it to the airport', and referring in an offhand way to 'one fire engine'.

By contrast, when police discovered a car bomb in London, certain voices in the media hyped up the city beyond belief and cheerily trotted out reports filled with lines like "now I don't know if you're familiar with London, but this is the West End, and it's usually filled with lots of people."



Culturally stunted

Of course, the fact the national media is almost wholly based in London has, of course, something to do with it. That's always been the case, and there's always been an associate anti-regional bias. When snow falls in London the world is told about it as if it were a global tragedy, but when it falls in, for instance, the north west the unspoken assumption is: they're used to it, they'll survive.

But of late this contrast between the sensibilities of different areas of the UK seems to have become more pronounced. Increasingly it feels like the media is perhaps not so much creating but articulating and reinforcing something that's already there.

In the 1980s there was much talk of a north-south divide in Britain, running roughly from the mouth of the River Severn in a north easterly direction to the Wash in Lincolnshire. Everywhere above this line was characterised as being economically ailing, industrially in decline, strongly anti-Mrs Thatcher and culturally stunted. Everywhere below this line revelled in low employment, ubiquitous affluence, fiercely pro-Mrs Thatcher sentiments and cultural prosperity.

This division was blasted away by the recession of the late 80s/early 90s, as rocketing interest rates and rising unemployment wreaked havoc right across the UK. Now, however, something resembling the divide can said to have returned - but with a markedly different geography.



Surreal and often preposterous

Today, the divide cuts a far tighter path.

It begins somewhere on the south coast to the east of the once all-mighty industrial shipyards of Portsmouth and Southampton, then runs in a north easterly arc up and around Greater London, ending on the Suffolk-Kent border. In other words, the 'south' is now merely the south east of England. The 'north' is the entire rest of Great Britain.

Not persuaded by such a brutal carve-up? It's manifest in more than just assumptions about how we handle weather and terrorism. It's the economy as well.

Financially, the south east gives an impression of booming. The best-paid jobs in the land and a high standard of living are numbing the effects of sequential rises in interest rates. Property prices are, to be sure, quite surreal and often preposterous, but seem to flourish in spite of rather than because of anything done by the Bank of England. There's apparently such a feel-good factor in the south east at the moment that, ironically, only a flash flood would dampen the mood.

Throughout the rest of the country it is a very different story.

House prices, salaries, the cost of living: all are hugely inconsistent. Another quarter-point rise in interest rates seems not to overtly worry the inhabitants of the south east. But it sure bothers everyone else, especially those whose salaries are lagging behind inflation, who have played their part in running up the UK's trillion-plus consumer debt, and who now wonder if they can even afford to 'get on their bike' to look for work elsewhere.



Talking only to itself

Above all there's a profound, ever-deepening cultural split. More than ever in my lifetime, the south east feels like it is talking only to itself and only interested in its own. The rest of the country seems different: more inclusive, more diverse, and joined in a burgeoning suspicion that their rulers in the capital just don't get it.

It's not just the media doing this. It's all of us. If floods had devastated London, would everyone outside of the south east have rushed to their aid or would they have shrugged their shoulders and snorted in derision? You don't need a map to work that one out.

Never mind talk of Scottish independence or Cornish devolution or even what team you support. When a fissure this stark has opened up in the social and economic fabric of Britain, what hope can there ever be for a united kingdom?



An opinion piece by Ian Jones, MSN Homepage Editor

[karlos]