Talk:North–South divide in England

message: I added this page because the original article North-South divide seemed to contain two different North-South divides.  while the north-south divide in the UK is economically based (like the global one), it's clear that the articles are talking about a different north and south.  For instance, in this article the North is the less economically successful than the South, unlike in the first article.  The North-South divide article is not on general splits between the north of a place and the south, but rather on the specific situation of socio-economic differences between different sets of countries.
Rs564 16:09, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Less economically successful

message: I cited a reference pointing out that more is spent in the North, both overall and in relation to the amount it is taxed, yet apparently: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jan/25/money.northsouthdivide
Claims that more houses are being built in the South (not talking about relative population increases at all), please explain more how apparently government spending favours the South?.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.109.115 (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: - Thomasf2811 (talk) 19:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Public expenditure favours the South now does it?

message: The area of this article that states "Indeed, it is thought most Northerners are actually descended from local Celtic tribes who were culturally anglicised, rather than being descended from Angles themselves."  Channel 4 recently made (and aired) a programme wherein a mass DNA study was undertaken across the various regions of the British Isles.  The result for the northeast genetically proved that the majority of northerners are actually descended from Angles and Danes NOT "local celtic tribes", as this article suggests.  Therefore this section of the article is both wrong and misleading.  I am going to remove this part of the article.
The article also states that the populations of the North of England are also more closely related to the Scots and Irish than southern England.  The article did not initially mention the tens and thousands of Scots that migrated down to the major industrial cities of Newcastle and Sunderland (of which I am decended myself).  The vast majority of Irish immigrants to the Sunderland/Newcastle area were also from Northern Ireland, a heavily Scots descended area.  The same aforementioned programme aired on channel 4, also showed that the majority of the eastern Scots and Northwestern Scots are actually descended from Norwegian vikings, and not celts.  These are the same areas (especially Eastern Scotland) that produced the migrants to the northeast of England, and therefore the same persons that influenced the genetic make up of the north (more specifically the northeast).
"It is now theorised the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes did not drive the indigeonous Celtic populations of modern day England into far off Cornwall, Wales and Scotland; rather, the local Celtic tribes most likely lived amongst and eventually inter-married with the Nordic settlers. DNA evidence weighs in heavy with this theory, but it is suggested through such evidence that the people of the North of England are proof positive of this intermingling theory."  There is no evidence to suggest the Germanic and Celtic populations ever intermingled.  There is a common misconception that the invading Saxons and Angles were a "ruling elite" (as in the case of the Roman invasion).  This is not true.  Especially in the case of Eastern and Southern England, where DNA evidence actually suggests the native celtic populations were driven in the extreme western fringes of the country.  This is proven, genetically, linguistically and historically in documented records.  This entire paragraph is riddled with inaccuracies, unsourced "evidence" and blatant and uninformed mistruths.
I will therefore correct and clarify this part of the article as fully as I can.  SKC 15:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have a look at this:  Marky-Son 18:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You've cited the Scotsman?  That anti-English, pro-Celtic paper?  Well done!  I'm still looking for the link to the Channel 4 information here matey, so I can't complain too much.  Seriously though, the Scotsman is the same paper that misquoted and exaggerated the Scots' want for independence and frequently bashes the English.  It would serve the Scotsman's ego well if the English turned out to be "Celtic". SKC 15:22, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Nordic/Celtic origins

message: As long as this retains an unsourced map and anecdotal 'some people as far south as Nottinghamshire include themselves in the north' etc., it is a best unverififed and at worst original research. Robdurbar 13:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO rather accurate though. Midlanders who live in the North tend to identify as 'Southern' probably because that is how Northerners treat them. Midlanders who live in the South often identify as Northern for the same reason.GordyB 19:10, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unsourced/Original Research

message: The East Anglia article pretty much clearly states that the borders of East Anglia are themselves undefined, so how can "much of East Anglia" be considered south when no-one's entirely sure what East Anglia itself is? Kinitawowi, who's never been sure whether he's from the north or the south and usually ends up answering "the east" (from Hunstanton, north-west Norfolk, which is on a dead-on latitude with Stoke) 18:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: East Anglia is similar to the East of England government region, is it not? 84.66.246.174 (talk) 20:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Similar but not-coterminous. I believe it's because there are strong local sentiments in the western part of the government region that the name "East Anglia" was not used. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:45, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Much of East Anglia"? 

message: As a native of Northumberland, indeed a Geordie (born almost within view of the Tyne - but that's another story), I always thought that we were The North, The Midlands were between Teesside and the M62, and anything below that was The South. Having lived in East Anglia for 19 years (and which I happen to think is in the south for the purpose of this argument - sorry, discussion), I still find it hard to divide England in terms of simply north and south. I now think that, from north to south, the Midlands start at about Chesterfield and the South at Milton Keynes (Daventry, for example, being The Midlands). Okay, here we go. From my perspective (and based on the people I know, as I think it is as much about the mentality of the people as it is the about the geography) the North-South Divide runs, from east to west, from The Wash above Kings Lynn, between Spalding and Peterborough, below Nottingham, Derby, Stoke and Crewe, above Whitchurch, to Wales. That's a bit different from the Bristol-Wash version, but I've always lived on the east coast so my perspective is a little different, I guess. Dommar 21:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I found it very funny and true-to-life.  Epa101 (talk) 09:13, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A matter of perspective 

message: Someone seems to created a map showing the North and the South seperated by one single horizontal line, this would be correct if the definition of North-South in the UK was based solely on geography, however, I have managed to find a source that gives a much better idea of the North-South divide on a map8 
Stevvvv4444 (talk) 20:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oxford people think of themselves as being in the midlands and there is considerable resentment at being lumped in with the south for both BBC and ITV administrative reasons. Anyone from Birmingham northwards will consider Oxford to be in the south of course. --Ef80 (talk) 14:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: The suggestion that the majority of northerners are Socialists, while everybody else are Conservatives is perhaps one of the reasons there is a UK divide in the first place. Ignorance. Taking a look at this map of the 2005 election for example there is a vast swathe of Conservatives in the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, which stretches across into Lancashire and even goes further north. The most Northernly Scottish are neither, since in the far north there are many Lib Dems. I think this needs to be recognised before we randomly lump in two out of the three Ridings of Yorkshire that are Conservative, as if everyone in Yorkshire is a red. Its not even a question of affluence since there are many working class Conservatives in the North and also champaign socialists in the South (Ken Livingston anyone?)  - Yorkshirian (talk) 08:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the north-south divide is just urban-rural really.  You see this with politics, as the rural areas [excluding Scotland, Wales and Cornwall] vote Tory whereas the urban areas vote Labour.  This article does mention this a few times.  I think that it needs a clean-up, as there is much unverified material here.  Epa101 (talk) 17:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Unfair political stereotypes

message: An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, :Image:Northsouth.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted.  Asdfasdf1231234 (talk) 23:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image:Northsouth.jpg listed for deletion 

message: Reference 9 is connected to the statement which says that government expenditure favours The South, yet if you read the article it is actually saying that government expenditure favours the North, in transferring wealth from the South-East to the North and the regions. Additionally the reference article itself is actually a blog, on the website of a recognised (liberal) think-tank, but it is a blog none the less, under my understanding this means that we can't really use it as a source, even if it did support the comment it is meant to support, which id doesn’t. Unless anyone has and strong objections and rationale as to why both the reference and the section that states that government spending is said to benefit the south then I will remove this in a few days. MattUK (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference 9 

message: I have again removed the claim that the "North-South divide in the United Kingdom" relating to Northern Ireland should be a see-also link to The Troubles. Firstly, the "South" ie the 26 counties of Ireland, are not part of the United Kingdom. Secondly it was never about the South vs the North in terms of the divide, it was the divided population of Northern Ireland itself. Thirdly all this is completely unsourced as well, it is original research by an editor to compare the recognised North-South divides in the United Kingdom with "The Troubles". 
Also as the text makes no reference to the "Severn-Wash line", the "Severn-Trent line" or the "Tees-Exe line" I do not see how it is relevant to this article. O Fenian (talk) 20:08, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: all this is completely unsourced as well, it is original research by an editor to compare the recognised North-South divides in the United Kingdom with "The Troubles" Where are your sources? O Fenian (talk) 18:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If Mr Taz can find a source that refers to the Troubles in terms of a "north-south divide", then fine. But otherwise his addition of that link runs foul of WP:OR and/or WP:POV. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 18:49, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: And ideally a source that compares that alleged divide with the ones in the article, or refers to "the economic and cultural differences". And as none of the lines on this recently introduced map are in the article, what relevance is it? It does not help the reader, it confuses them surely? O Fenian (talk) 18:56, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Ireland and map

message: - LOL!  Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[John Prescott]] vs. [[Brian Sewell]] 

message: Not only is the text of this article a mess (as was its predecessor North-South divide in the United Kingdom), but the whole grouping of articles around this topic is a mess.  I don't think recent unflagged moves and redirects have particularly helped, but setting that aside there needs to be a proper discussion here about how the issue can best be resolved - recognising, in my view, that there are valid arguments for one or more articles to exist to describe economic and cultural differences between the different parts of the UK, and/or the different parts of Great Britain, and/or the different parts of England. There are clear differences between "the north" and "the south" of England which justify an article.  But, there is a problem that this article (currently called North-South divide (England)) doesn't do that very well, and also (still) raises issues relating to Scotland and Wales.  Personally I think this article should remain, with the Scotland and Wales bits taken out, but there then needs also to be a new (possibly quite short) article called something like North-South divide (Great Britain) to take those points on board.  Or, we should go back to the old article North-South divide in the United Kingdom, take out any bits relating to Ireland, and rename that article North-South divide (Great Britain) - but, it would be difficult to get the right balance in that article between the "within England" issue and the Scotland and Wales issues - potentially very sensitive matters.  I'm not sure of the best way forward, but can we have a discussion here without too many more unilateral moves and renamings?  Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought it was a mess too. Now I think it's better. The article was about the North-South divide in England, but titled with the United Kingdom; and because England and the UK are basically the same thing as we all know, a couple of bits for "Great Britain" had been appended. I don't think North-South for the whole island is a prominent way of thinking about the island, and thus don't think we will need an article about it. I've never heard of it myself ... constantly hear the English distinguishing themselves as "northerners" or "southerners" though. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 20:48, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's one perspective.  However, there also refs (and statistics) which go UK-wide or GB-wide, and contrast southern England with the rest of the island (or, very occasionally, UK).  For example, for most of the 20th century the main political divisions in the UK (or, at least, GB) were between southern England (mostly Conservative) and "the rest" - northern England, Scotland and Wales, predominantly Labour.  Those patterns have changed a lot with the growth of nationalism in recent decades, and other factors, but they are still historically important and worthy of a reference within the GB (or UK) context.  Some residual mentions of those factors still remain in this article, even though it is now called ...(England).  Those factors are still worthy of being mentioned, and should be placed somewhere.  Where?  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:00, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

text: PS: The very first sentence of the very first version of this article, in 2005, read: "In the United Kingdom the term "North-South divide" is used to refer to the divide between the wealthy South East of England and the less affluent industrial areas of Scotland, Wales and northern England." So the non-England refs were certainly not "appended".  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:05, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  80-90% of the text was about the English division. If a GB one is notable, a new well-referenced non-OR article would be useful to the 'Pedia. Journalists and crats in London/SE England tend to divide the world into "Home Counties" and "the rest of the world", so it is not particularly significant how this manifests itself in individual examples. Probably this is more of a periphery-core thing in relation to he UK than a North-South thing, though as the latter is a very old  deeply rooted way of thinking about England it may be occassionally accommodated. But if it's just to flesh out some Home Counties prejudice that Europe's 5th largest financial center and the EU's oil capital form part of some red Transtamesian poverty-stricken continuum of decaying urbanism, then it's probably not gonna be worth a 'Pedia article. ;) Really can't find much on it myself ... probably a mention in this article without violating WP:UNDUE would be sufficient. Cheers, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 22:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's a pretty crummy article, isn't it? I've removed the stupid sentence which begins "southerneners (sic) almost universally regard the Midlands as North.......". Poshseagull (talk) 08:16, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is going on, and what is this article about? - please discuss 

message: Hi, I've just seen that the statement, and and link to the news source that shows that spending favours the North has been deleted and replaced with the old and erronious one that spending favours The South, despite the linked article not supporting that information, it covers only a narrow area (housing) of a system that is no longer active, where as the article showing funding favours the North has detailed financial information on all government spending which shows that catagorically across all areas funding favours the North at the detriment of The South East. 
I don't want this to get into a revert or edit war, but it seems to me that the prime point based on the actual numbers should be in the article, rather than some out of date information about one small area of spending. Can I have your views please? If no one states any views, I'll move back to the DM article, with the full numbers that show and support the statement that shows that government support favours the North.
MattUK (talk) 09:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added Stereoytpes to the "see also" list. People love divides and stereotypes, don't they? But they're hardly encyclopaedic, are they? Ah well, perhaps someone could do us articles on the arts-science divide or the town-country divide? The latter in particular could contain all sorts of platitudinous assertions.Poshseagull (talk) 08:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Funding favouring the North 

message: Does no-one ever visit the Office for National Statistics?  Scotland, from memory, is up in the top 5 (if not the top 3) NUTS1 regions of the UK in terms of Gross Value Added per capita and yet is lumped with the north of England in terms of "Growth" which could be equated - at least by casual readers - with economic performance.  Maybe if real terms growth statistics existed for regions other than Scotland, this assertion could be evaluated. Until then, I would recommend that this article concerns itself only with non-economic intra-regional hatred without reference to "facts"  e.g. Southerners are "poofs", Northerners all own pigeons.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stauner (talk • contribs) 22:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added Stereoytpes to the "see also" list. People love divides and stereotypes, don't they? But they're hardly encyclopaedic, are they? Ah well, perhaps someone could do us articles on the arts-science divide or the town-country divide? The latter in particular could contain all sorts of platitudinous assertions.Poshseagull (talk) 08:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Probably the very worst article on wikipedia

message: Could mention the heraldic provinces (Clarenceux vs. Norroy) traditionally divided by the River Trent... AnonMoos (talk) 20:05, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Heraldic provinces

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: About one sixth of the section on the Midlands is a description of the 2004 film Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. This is the only artistic work referenced in this section, it does not seem appropriate for an encyclopedia to lean so heavily on a single film when characterizing a fairly large region. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.19.142 (talk) 22:33, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Excessive significance given to a single film?