High speed rail link & the North, South devide..

[Longcol]

Few rich Londoners exist and even fewer will risk life north of Walford Gap,given the cultural divide,poor education and other perceived disadvantages.Most rich Londoners are buying homes in Poland and Romania.

 

Some people already commute to London from places like Retford - can't see them commuting from places like Poland & Romania

[cressida]

Some people already commute to London from places like Retford - can't see them commuting from places like Poland & Romania

 

Perhaps they are buying houses there as an investment till they retire there

[evildrneil]

I really don't see how HS2 will regenerate the North - as far as I can see all it will do is push the commuter belt for London further out into the rest of the country. Jobs, research, money and power will still be localised in the South East people will just be able to travel further to get to them. Rather and shoveling vast amounts of money into HS2 why not, for example, move some government departments and big research institutes out of the South East and up into the North so the local population can get jobs without having to spend ridiculous amounts of time traveling and at the same time reduce the housing and infrastructure pressures in the South East?

[tinfoilhat]

I really don't see how HS2 will regenerate the North - as far as I can see all it will do is push the commuter belt for London further out into the rest of the country. Jobs, research, money and power will still be localised in the South East people will just be able to travel further to get to them. Rather and shoveling vast amounts of money into HS2 why not, for example, move some government departments and big research institutes out of the South East and up into the North so the local population can get jobs without having to spend ridiculous amounts of time traveling and at the same time reduce the housing and infrastructure pressures in the South East?

 

The government having been moving stuff out of the south east since the 70s (clue - moorfoot) and even the bbc have up sticks and gone to Salford. Unless its a call centre or a car plant, the big private money generally goes darn sarf. I don't know why alot of the time. Maybe with hs2 big business might be more inclined to push out further, but I agree with you, it's probably just going to extend the commuter belt.

[evildrneil]

The government having been moving stuff out of the south east since the 70s (clue - moorfoot) and even the bbc have up sticks and gone to Salford. Unless its a call centre or a car plant, the big private money generally goes darn sarf. I don't know why alot of the time. Maybe with hs2 big business might be more inclined to push out further, but I agree with you, it's probably just going to extend the commuter belt.

 

Look at what they move - generally (though obviously not in all cases) it's pretty low grade admin jobs. The BBC is a good move though it does appear to be a lot of back room jobs and some radio moving to Media City rather than the high profile stuff. One of the really big economic drivers are research centers which form high tech hubs and drive new technology jobs and companies - it would be nice to see a big research institute of the magnitude of EBI/Sanger, Rutherford Appleton or the National Institute for Medical Research outside the South East.

[tinfoilhat]

Look at what they move - generally (though obviously not in all cases) it's pretty low grade admin jobs. The BBC is a good move though it does appear to be a lot of back room jobs and some radio moving to Media City rather than the high profile stuff. One of the really big economic drivers are research centers which form high tech hubs and drive new technology jobs and companies - it would be nice to see a big research institute of the magnitude of EBI/Sanger, Rutherford Appleton or the National Institute for Medical Research outside the South East.

 

Not really my area of expertise (like that's going to stop me having a go !!) but aren't these sort of things heavily associated with universities ? With respect to Sheffield uni, I'd guess Oxford, Cambridge have that tied up ?Also isn't alot of commercial pharma companies research done in Switzerland ?

 

We could do with an airport......

[evildrneil]

Not really my area of expertise (like that's going to stop me having a go !!) but aren't these sort of things heavily associated with universities ? With respect to Sheffield uni, I'd guess Oxford, Cambridge have that tied up ?Also isn't alot of commercial pharma companies research done in Switzerland ?

 

We could do with an airport......

 

Not necessarily - Sanger/EBI is in a tiny village about 10 miles south of Cambridge, Rutherford Appleton is at Didcot about 10 miles south of Oxford and now home to the UK synchroton source which used to be based at Daresbury and the National Institute for Medical Research is in North London. Most pharma research comes out of the states - the UK does have a couple of biggies GSK (no 4 in terms of size) with its centers in London and Hertfordshire and AstraZeneca (no 5) which is a bit more spread out with centers in Cheshire, Bristol, Devon, Luton and London.

 

As the research institutes are funded with public money spreading them around the country a bit would be nice - the public does exist outside London to any politicians reading this!