London vs. the rest of the UK

Last night I watched a show with pretty much the above title. The timing of it's airing on the BBC is interesting. 

BBC Journo

This is because the subject matter, it could be argued, has been the route cause why Scottish independence has become so important to certain sections of Scottish society.

The program shown on the BBC was a sort of investigation into why London was leaving the rest of the UK behind. The show uses Zipfs Law to show that London is way ahead of other leading cities in the UK. The show actually suggests that, rather than London being too big it is in fact the other cities that are too small.

The general content of the show can be read here.

So why has this increased the call for Scottish independence? 

It would seem that London has reached a kind of critical mass and is like a super massive black hole sucking in more capital, resources and people. All the other cities in the UK are not big enough in their own right to stop or even slow it's progress. 

North Sea Rig 

Since North Sea resources have largely subsidised this position the creation of an independent sovereign nation might just act to keep some resource flowing south and direct it at Scotland.

In fact I will go as far as to say that if National Government does not find a way of either limiting London's pull or at least allowing other cities to compete we may well see a lot more areas wishing autonomy from Westminster. For instance a newly independent Scotland might become attractive to say Newcastle who sit closer to Edinburgh than London and have a long history of feeling overlooked by Westminster. The SNP reputedly want to re industrialise Scotland. The North East of England would like some of that.

The idea on the program was to create a super city around Manchester. It could work but it would need to draw in West Yorkshire too. And this is where problems occur. You see if you are travelling from London you can reach anywhere in the UK directly and reasonably quickly. Try going East to West across the midlands

There is a direct service from Norwich in East Anglia to Liverpool in the North West of England. As the crow flies it is 190 miles and the train journey takes over 5 hours taking in cities like Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester. If you travel to Edinburgh from London it takes an hour less but an extra 140 miles as the crow flies. the point is that there has been little investment in this country to join the dots that aren't London. 

Mayor of London Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson was talking about Crossrail 2 in the program, Whoa!! there my blond bombshell. Westminster should spend that money on decent East-West communications first.