..not in ten thousand years.

I only wish RJR was still around - I think I heard a distant shattering sound blowing down from Liverpool.

A mass migration to London, Cambridge and Oxford. It's like something out of a Ballard novel.

Ha! Policy Exchange are a questionable lot. Hard to take anything they do seriously in light of THIS crap.

Newsnight investigation:

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3

It's worth watching.

That is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.

Isn't there enough abandonment up North? I remember places up in Lancashire like Accrington, Burnley etc. having entire neighborhoods boarded up around the closed mills. I thought that was a pretty eerie sight.

Where the hell would they put all these people if they were to "migrate?" London, Cambridge and Oxford are crowded enough.

100% stupid.

Rimbaud III wrote:Ha! Policy Exchange are a questionable lot. Hard to take anything they do seriously in light of THIS crap..

Ha!
Thanks for the links, Zaf. Can't wait to watch that.
Shit, I thought that kind of shoddy reporting only happened here in the states.

I couldn't bear to listen to the discussion about this on the radio this morning; my blood boiled from the first word. They even negate their own thinking here:

It was time to be "realistic about the ability of cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle to regenerate struggling nearby towns such as Liverpool, Bradford and Sunderland.

Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle are examples of how regeneration can work*, and there is no reason why Liverpool, Bradford and Sunderland cannot emulate them. Oh, and Liverpool, Bradford and Sunderland are cities, not towns, you ignorant fucks.

I'll admit to being shocked on a recent visit to Liverpool when driving through the Kensington district to see the main road lined by derelict terrace houses slated for demolition. The area is on its arse, no doubt. But it is madness to suggest that the solution is to transport everybody to Oxford and Cambridge.

Of course, what they're really saying here is not that regeneration doesn't work, but that it costs too much money. And the North isn't worth it.




*to a point. There's a whole can of worms about the changes in Northern towns and cities over the last thirty years...

I don't want to live in the South. I'd be scared of being stabbed to death at any moment.

Policy Exchange is one of the most influential right-of-centre think tanks and it has been credited with much of the fresh thinking behind the revival of the Conservative Party under David Cameron.

I think we can safely ignore anything they say. The sooner that lot down south are under water, the better.

Nina wrote:Where the hell would they put all these people if they were to "migrate?" London, Cambridge and Oxford are crowded enough.

I think it's hilarious that a right wing think tank is advocating mass migration to those bastions of Middle-England; Cambridge and Oxford. They'll no doubt issue a report decrying all this migration once accents have sagged and fried chicken joints have replaced all the bookshops.

From the name of this crowd alone, I would not trust a single word that comes out of their blower.

The very first paragraph on their wiki page confirmed everything I need to know. Free-market this, reform welfare state that...typical right-wing nuttery.

The collapse of the northern industrial towns was a wet dream for these guys and now they're just pissing on the ashes. For fucking shame.

I'm not sure how all northerners moving south would solve anybody's problem. I can't imagine that any of these pricks have ever been to the north.

David Cameron's favourite think tank? Full of his ex school mates no doubt. You know, the ones he fagged for in public school.

Set up by Spectator and Telegraph lackeys, what the fucking fuck fuck do they know about the North?