Northerners complain more about energy, telecommunications and travel than Southerners, according to new research, which experts have said shows the true scale of the “levelling up challenge”.
Analysis of more than half a million complaints showed people in the North of England and in Scotland reported significantly larger numbers of issues with debt and billing, connectivity and customer services for essential infrastructure sectors.
This is just one of those cultural differences. It’s not that Northerners are less happy, more oppressed or face a worse world – well, other than being from the North of course. It’s that the culture is different. Daddy’s little princess parades in her prom dress and gets an “Aye, not bad” where the Southern shandy drinker will have exclaimed “How gorgeous!”. Grumbling about t’tmill is the way of life.
To miss this, to try to do the comparison across the cultural line is rather silly. As if you’d gone to measure what workers have for lunch and concluded that those with a snap box were paying cards instead.
I live in a rural semi with a large garden that cost 39k in 1993. My daily commute takes me half an hour each way by car or I can cycle it in 50 minutes. Why would I want to be levelled up with the South?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AVoKAlDokNo
Southern softies, they don’t know they’re born!
https://youtu.be/y37ocMI53xo
Londoners tend not to complain because they don’t speak English and many of them are dodging repatriation.
Of course we grumble about how bad it is.
If we didn’t, the Southerners might realise it’s better up here.
(Which it isn’t, of course)
there’s a west country* man i know that calls his young (6 or 7) son love. I wince every time.
(*ish – i don’t know might just be dorset)
Public transport is certainly an area where t’North could do with investment and that investment might actually make a return, unlike HS2.
In my experience North and South are about even. The South edges ahead on weather, the North on housing costs.
London is a different beast altogether. I loved living there, but every time I visit these days it seems to get shittier. The poshest enclaves are still nice, but overall…
Perhaps Northerners have more time to moan, since they aren’t either at work or spending hours commuting to work? Southerners are already accustomed to terrible lives; so other services being horrible just washes over them.
@HallowedBe: I was at university with a west country person who called everybody, male or female, “flower”. Which is a bit odd coming from a big hairy bloke.
@HB
In deepest Somerset everyone is “my lover”.
@ Arthur
I have heard “flower” in Somerset, but I have a feeling it’s less regional and more military (RN, RM) origin.
I thought flower was more Manchester/Bolton, as in hello Flower, here’s 10p, call your mum you won’t be coming home tonight (sounding like Fred Dibnah).
Jussi,
No.
MC,
“Public transport is certainly an area where t’North could do with investment and that investment might actually make a return, unlike HS2.”
Where? I’ve been in Manchester at peak time and the traffic didn’t seem that bad. Parking charges for all day parking seem to be cheaper than Reading, which suggests lower demand.
And that’s the main benefit of rail – avoiding congested roads.
“In my experience North and South are about even. The South edges ahead on weather, the North on housing costs.”
Yup
“London is a different beast altogether. I loved living there, but every time I visit these days it seems to get shittier. The poshest enclaves are still nice, but overall…”
There was definitely a time when London was the cutting edge place. I remember my parents taking me to Hamley’s for my birthday and they had stuff you didn’t have outside. It meant museums when they were serious about their subject rather than ramming an agenda down your throat. As an adult, it meant shops with all sorts of exotic food, foreign cinema or huge bookshops like Foyles. It was the place to go for gigs.
But unless you’ve got serious money from your job that allows you to live in Kensington, what’s the point now? Amazon’s got the same shit, you can stream your foreign films, lots of gig venues have closed and the same bands are playing Bristol or Birmingham.
“Northerners complain more about energy”
Yes, because it’s an Eck of a lot colder, wetter and windier oop North – and London Gov’t has hiked energy price by ~50%
“cultural difference” No, see above