Why the UK Economy is Too Reliant on London

[@ecclesiaandune687]

Reminder that this was due to to direct government suppression of other cities via legislature, Birmingham in particular had its industry stripped away, infrastructure and gov projects all centralised on London, this wasn’t an accident, it was policy EDIT : Wrote the comment hastily on my lunch break - have a look at the West Midlands Plan of 1946. A quote from an article describing it. 'In 1946, the Government commissioned the West Midlands Plan, which attempted to constrain Birmingham’s growth - local government was obliged to achieve a target population of 990,000, lower than its actual 1951 population of 1,113,000.' 'The Government wanted Birmingham to shrink.'

[@m0o0n0i0r]

so true, and hence why BREXIT happened IMO

[@Swedishpolymath]

@@m0o0n0i0r And that's why we need to figure out how to deal with that. My football (soccer) reform will bring back the football to the fans and the local communities. I work for a Swedish-German banker that knows Gianni Infantino personally. He is originally from Bern but spends a lot of his time in Geneva and Stockholm.

[@lindsaycole8409]

@@m0o0n0i0r With the irony being that the EU actually helped decentralise spending and investment in the UK away from London and into more economically depressed parts of the UK.

[@m0o0n0i0r]

@@lindsaycole8409 indeed, i voted leave because uk politicians blamed everything on the EU. Now they do not have that excuse. Voters need to wise up. BTW I was born in leeds, moved to birmingham then moved to the South East, no work for me up north or the midlands you see. Accession back in to the EU would require the UK to adopt the euro and free movement. At least then we can have a clear out of the BOE and parliament if we did rejoin. My personal view, the UK is not good for the EU and visa versa as shown with so many concessions the EU made when we were in.

[@emp437]

Why?

[@TheEvertw]

One of the EU's priorities is to help poor regions develop. The little that was done to help the poorer regions in the UK was EU-funded. So this is definitely another Brexit "Benefit".

[@riversguy92]

Almost funny except the stupidly affects everyone else too. Brexiteers of wales I’m looking at you (and sadly many more)

[@spacetime3]

What is crazy is that people cant see that uplifting the rest of the UK is the best bang for buck investment, having rest of the UK being so far behind we should have relatively easy gains to be made, investing london more than we already do is wasteful because you don't gain as much as spending the equivalent in the rest of the country. Once we've leveled this somewhat we then have cities which can contribute well to each other.

[@Icemann336]

I agree, nobody here seems to have the capacity to comprehend the idea of long-termism anymore and that is frightening

[@zurielsss]

It’s like putting a bell collar on the cat, all the mice knew it’s beneficial but no one wants to do it. The initial years of diverting investments up north will slow down the economy and no politician is willing to risk it.

[@TheReferrer72]

Where is the evidence for this?

[@mathyeuxsommet3119]

How tho ? You use the word investing very liberally but it sound more like you want to subsidies them.Countries go from been agrarian to industrial and them service based all of these transitions mean more urbanization and concentration,the UK is a small country there isn't much space for two world class metropolis there.

[@mikester4896]

@@mathyeuxsommet3119 Investment in infrastructure, housing and city/town centre projects mainly and nationalisation of natural monopolies. HS2 is a great example of infrastructure spending to benefit the rest of the UK but it's also the best example of how not to do it. We need more affordable housing and just more houses in general, city/town centres are now barren wastelands which need redevelopment to keep up with the times and attract more businesses to come and stay. We also need to start refunding youth centres as well to provide things for teenagers to do to keep them out of trouble and prevent them ending up in lives of crime. Private companies are ripping us off for our utilities which is keeping us poorer, nationalisation is an absolute necessity to stop this. It's not about creating London 2.0, it's about making the rest of the country less poor.

[@BlackDjin98]

It's honestly so disappointing when you compare our regional "capitals* with similar EU ones - the complete lack of infrastructure connectivity of public transport is so lacking

[@GrayDogNowIDK]

Meanwhile London keeps getting more unnecessary Underground lines. It's cronyism.

[@oscarmccoy9102]

@GrayDogNowIDKeven in London the connections are shit. East London transport wise is so badly connected compared to central and west London.

[@MAZE.3X]

just the sheer sight of new york city is enough to make even london look ugly

[@Muzakman37]

Isn't Leeds the biggest city in Western Europe *not* to have a Metro system? Says it all really.

[@juicyfruit4378]

@oscarmccoy9102south London as well - the Tube should have been expanded south as well as the East - goes to show you where the wealth lies

[@СовиныйТеоретик]

As a Russian, we have the same problem with Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. Putin has built hypercentralized model, where all key decisions are passed in the Kremlin. Moscow has a quality of life like in the West, meanwhile, the rest of the country looks like Latin America or Africa. We definitely need more powerful local and regional governments to make them compete against each other for investments and development.

[@MegaCooliam]

Interesting!

[@riversguy92]

Africa and Latin America are large areas, and more than a few contain probably higher gdp than those parts of Russia you’re on about. You also seem to think everywhere in the west is doing great, which clearly isn’t the truth as described in this video using the uk as an example. Best not to generalise, pal.

[@MegaCooliam]

@riversguy92 nowhere does the Russian man state that all of africa/SA is poorer than those non Metropolitan areas of Russia though. You're putting words into his mouth. Take your frustration out on someone else.

[@davidh3205]

I work in the academic sector and I have essentially been forced to work for a uni in the south east. There just isn't any money elsewhere. The majority of funding is in what gets called "the golden triangle" of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. I'm from up north and am managing to get away with working remotely. Other than just not wanting to live in the south east, I also just don't want to contribute to the regional inequality. Even if it is only my wage, which isn't much in the grant scheme of things, at least I'm funnelling a bit of that south east money back up here. It's grim up north.

[@bbbf09]

are you a russian troll bot? - your name suggest it

[@Turkishfella]

Smart idea, I hope that keeps on working for you

[@Rocket33r]

It's tricky, but I think having knowledge/spirit in the north is helpful as well. I'm not convinced that so much work needs to be done in the South East, though I understand the draw, especially for graduates.

[@creativeusername3408]

Tbh, most Londoners live paycheck to pay check, even the upper middle class. In the North you usually make less but you can save a lot more and buy better property for lower cost. So the technical wealth of the North I would say is higher in terms of real disposable income

[@MrL702]

For people who are over qualified in their current roles, what was their degree in? If its not a STEM degree I don't see an issue

[@brownstone243]

The problem is that there's too many industries in London. In the USA, government is based in Washington, banking is in New York, tech is in Silicon Valley, the party capital is Miami, the film industry is in Hollywood, etc. But in the UK all of those industries are based in the capital. Also, with each American state being running semi-independently from government, they're able to set their own regional laws & taxes. If Yorkshire had the power to set the lowest income tax in the UK, people would move there in the same way that Americans are flocking to Texas due to it's low taxes. Or if the Midlands had the lowest corporation tax, businesses would relocate there from London. Can you imagine how many people would move to Wales if they could set the lowest stamp duty on homes? The UK tech industry should have been set up in one of the old seaside towns, like Skegness, Great Yarmouth, Hastings, etc as a way of reviving their local economies. Silicon Beach sounds way more appealing than the awfully named silicon roundabout in east London. Alas, the UK will never have a forward thinking leader willing to implement the changes necessary to reduce the UK's reliance on London.

[@wongrichx]

Yes. The UK tech industry is a joke. 🤣

[@aaroneus5479]

I am that forward thinking leader currently working on creating a new party in which one of the main policies is to reduce reliance on London.

[@ZuulGatekeeper]

@@wongrichx It's one of only three Tech sectors in the world with a trillion+ dollar valuation.

[@andrijapfc]

@@aaroneus5479 Dominic is that you?

[@aaroneus5479]

@andrijapfc lmao, no

[@SaintGerbilUK]

The problem is that even large infrastructure projects like HS2 which was designed to connect the north started by connecting London to the north and then abandoned (for now) providing no benefit to the north and only benefits London. The same was true of Cross-Rail connecting the south west to London instead better connects east London to west London, with most outside of London improvements abandoned.

[@geoffroberts1131]

😂 yeah that was the problem with HS2 wasn't it?

[@daisyeater21]

They should have started building from the North

[@georgebarnett121]

It's difficult to justify when the government is so cash strapped and projects like cross rail have the highest return on investment due to being in London and the associated crowding

[@Carl-hs420a]

I knew HS2 was a sham project when they started it _from_ London; a project wherein we simply lacked the knowhow, and no attempt was made to figure this out in the north where trial and error would've been far cheaper, and where it's sparsely populated so getting the thing connected would've been easier too.

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@daisyeater21 this is my thoughts, they should have connected the northern cities first IMO.

[@Ikol101]

What really is sad is I had this discussion with my dad 15 years ago. My dad used to complain that Blair moved a bunch of public services to the north and that the south east was paying for the rest of the country. I agreed and said that the government should make policies to encourage private industries to create jobs outside the south east, to which my dad said no one is interested in starting a company or investing in anywhere other than London so it would be pointless to try. This lead to a circular argument when I asked how could he expect the people in the north to do anything other than public sector work to which he would still complain the north were free loading. It is sad that I, someone who has never studied economics, could see the issue a decade ago yet our leaders either could not or allowed it to get worse.

[@neilbiggs1353]

The other part though is that didn't they close a load of home office/immigration buildings outside of London at the same time (or at least in the early 2000s)? It essentially forces the asylum seekers etc to be housed in what was already the most populous part of the country. I remember hearing that, but I've never found a list of what places were closed, though it does appear that almost all the immigration parts of the civil service that isn't based at ports or airports are in South London...

[@wclifton968gameplaystutorials]

The UK Government has been invested in destroying the North of England, from Clement Atlee's 'Town & Country Planning Act 1946', to forcing Birmingham to shrink it's population in 1951 through policies such as the 'Green belt' around the West Midlands, to a de-facto forced closure of coal mines, and a push for ever higher industrial energy prices by effectively banning new construction of electricity power plants, including "green energy" in electricity prices by law, not building enough new electricity production capacity in a decade, and by closing Britain's last coal fired power plant, despite rising electricity prices. The centralisation of the UK Economy on the South-East of England, and London, has been a deliberate act of all 4 large political parties (Cons., Labour, Liberals (Now Lib. Dems), and Greens) since at least the 1930s, whether they realise/d it, or not, all through the act of a push for Keynsian, and Socialist economic policy, despite the prior successes of the mostly free market in Great Britain.

[@creativeusername3408]

@@neilbiggs1353Oh really? There’s a big one in Liverpool

[@neilbiggs1353]

@@creativeusername3408 There were a few left, but the version of events I heard said they started off with about 15-18, it's now down to about 7, and the bulk of the processing of asylum seekers happens in London, with the remainder mostly handling regional visa issues. As I've never found an article detailing the closures, it's possibly pub talk, but it feels about right having seen the queues explode in the London office

[@maxresdefault_]

Living in the Southwest can be frustrating at times. Sure, lots of people live in the Southeast and the North does need investment, but Cornwall is among the most deprived regions in Western Europe

[@mattbeard3083]

It still astounds me that Cornwall / Devon voted so strongly in favour of Brexit when it was the area receiving the most money from the EU for projects...

[@JakeyBaby6]

Being a Northerner that lived in Plymouth for years for Uni. I dislike when northerners categorise all southerners together. I feel like the South West is more like us than the rest of the south. Broadly i find the not talking to strangers didnt apply down there either.

[@mattbeard3083]

@JakeyBaby6 living in the southwest myself, but my dad worked in the North for a few years, I'd rather spend time talking to "Northerners" than anyone from the South East or London, although my strong west country accent makes things more of a challenge 😂

[@Bozebo]

@@mattbeard3083 Caus the people who live there aren't from there.

[@JakeyBaby6]

@@mattbeard3083 Oh 100%. I struggle with some South West accents, I find North East easier. I'm a Yorkshireman.

[@sackville_bagginsess]

This is why Cross rail and hs2 is so critical to the government. Housing is so expensive that soon it won’t be economically viable to live and work in London. We need to keep expanding the commuter belt or the bubble will pop

[@Carl-hs420a]

Nah, London would take a page out of Hong Kong's book and make cage-style homes. That, or the old work factory homes make a comeback. The poor will find dwelling in London, because London needs an underclass to sweep the streets.

[@BanterRanterr]

Instead of building HS2 and Crossrail they could build prefabricated council flats for extended lease like 10 years but Tories didn't want housing bubble to burst 😑

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@sackville_bagginsess if they wanted HS2 and Cross-rail to benefit those outside of London they would have started there but they started in London.

[@inbb510]

​@@SaintGerbilUK, you know that capacity problems were the greatest in London so that's why they started there first?? I think people forgot that London has 8 million people instead of 1 or 2 like other cities in England or even Europe for that matter for decades.

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@inbb510 yes the problem is that London is congested, and if the North was better connected then it would be a more viable option for businesses and people. Making it easier to get into London makes it more congested and concentrates businesses more than now.

[@Pedanta]

0:12 North easy I didn't know we had an easy mode, I need to adjust my settings

[@RangerTwo]

Error 404: Zero Investments Found. Please try again later or contact your government.

[@notusneo]

So what's the difficulty? Normal? Hard? Don't tell me its hell mode?

[@SirWhig-esq.]

To paraphrase/sum up a really shit movie ‘London eats up everything’

[@Tsukuri123]

I see what you did there

[@TheReferrer72]

London pays for the rest of the UK.

[@implosion92]

Mortal engines?!? If so the books of it are great

[@AiGeneratedWaluigi]

@@TheReferrer72steal and then give back

[@Chill_gh0sttt]

@@TheReferrer72the rest of the uk would probably be able to pay for itself if London hadn’t hoarded all of the budget, resources, opportunities and talent to itself.

[@Erik-z4s]

I'd like to move to a more affordable area but once you leave London you have less opportunities for work. This is a major issue in the UK. Glad this is being covered.

[@xMasterAssassin93]

When manufacturing industry is killed off (thanks, Thatcher!), your country is dependent upon a service exporting economy. Because services usually involve a lot of centralism and corporatism, it is both fashionable and practical to be placed in the capital of a nation. This means most companies will need to be based in London, with many workers commuting in and out of the city to work. This is why many regions in the UK are so poor yet the regional south and central England are thriving. It's not rocket science, it's economics as well as geography (and of course politics, because political decisions make a significant difference - again, thanks Thatcher!)

[@ecaeas4439]

It has nothing to do with a differentiation between manufacturing and services. Remember that manufacturing also accumulates into centres of trade - in the industrial era of the UK, every modern city had a specialised trade. Birmingham produced high-tech metal products such as g*ns. Staffordshire specialised in pottery. Manchester specialised in spinning cotton. West Yorkshire specialised in fabric manufacturing. South Yorkshire specialised in mining. The south of Wales specialised in coal. And modern day examples are found in countries like Germany, where, for example, wolfsburg is one of the main centres for the car industry. Kyoto in japan specialises in consumer electronics. The main issue is at the decision-making level, where the government has never led by example to push through devolving huge amounts of funding to outside London. We could use the reunification of Germany as a framework - the government there pushed massive amounts of public investment into the east, prompting more private investment and bringing the east closer (but not perfectly in line with) to the west. The Government has to lead the charge to make the country less reliant on london. Until it does that with serious amounts of money over a sustained period to fund infrastructure improvement projects, for example, the problem will just get worse.

[@wclifton968gameplaystutorials]

Margret Thatcher didn't 'kill British Industry', as it was already in decline long before she became PM, and if anything, industrial production actually increased while she was in power. That's not to say that she didn't have a role to play in the death of British Industry, but rather that it's decline was already set in motion, as far back as the 1950s, and 1960s, such as when the Government forced car companies to open manufacturing sites in stupid places far from their existing operations, or when Clement Atlee tried to nationalise nearly every industry in the 1940s (thankfully he failed).

[@davidty2006]

North east ere was hit hard by industrial decline and never recovered. Tons of space the factories and steel mills were on are still empty not to mention abandoned railway on the existing lines that has potential for a cheap metro system

[@OnlyYato]

why it just makes sense to leave this country, the inequality between cities is ridiculous and London is eating it all up. Im on a pretty decent salary but had to move out of Bristol to a town due to rising cost. Bristol has NOTHING for living costs to be expensive besides the fact its easy to catch a train into london

[@devanman7920]

They completely stripped the other cities of everything they had. Birmingham in particular was a powerhouse once

[@EnzoRandomBK]

Worst part is that the Londoners with higher pays move to Bristol or Manchester working remotely, inflating housing prices and further fucking the situation up.

[@Alexander-yb1zc]

As someone who was living and working in Bristol then moved to London because if I'm paying the same amount but getting a London wage this hits hard.

[@solsunman383]

@@Alexander-yb1zc The good thing about living in Bristol, but working in London, is that at least you will be spending money in Bristol when you are at home. This will help local businesses and people, who will then be (very slightly) better able to afford local housing.

[@joshuahillerup4290]

That kind of thing would actually fix this problem though, at least if there's enough of the UK those people can move to

[@tuskular]

This is actually better for the area in the long term as long as they spend money at local businesses, the housing prices being inflated is more likely due to the lack of housing and big corps buying up huge amount of housing to rent out.

[@roguebanana87]

I remember when they spent billions on facilities for London 2012, stating that everyone would benefit from their use after the games. I live in Aberdeen mate, cant just nip round when I have a free afternoon

[@TheReferrer72]

You remember when London kept more of its taxes is what you meant!

[@Vox_Casei]

The Millenium Dome has got to be one of the worst examples of "London Exceptionalism". One of the sites looking like it was going to get the winning bid was in Birmingham. It was more central to the island, had a motorway junction, a train station AND an airport nearby for people to travel to it. Also already has ample space for people to park nearby. Instead the Lord in charge of the project decides to shove it on some awkward spot in London that if I remember right, needed to have a new tube station built nearby (or at least one altered to deal with the increase in footfall). Maybe the project wouldn't have failed to the point the Dome was sold off if it were more easily accessible and not shoved in the capital because "London".

[@Wasserfeld.]

​​@@Vox_CaseiBut now it's a massive success, no? And the London location has all of those transport things too

[@Vox_Casei]

​@@Wasserfeld. London as a whole has those links, but the point was that the Birmingham site had more in closer proximity, and parking didn't require you to drive into the middle of an already congested city. It was also more central to the country so closer for people living in the north. The original Dome failed as visitor numbers were half those needed. Location likely had some blame there. It might not have failed if it were more easily accessible to more of the country. Its a success now after being sold to a private entity and turned into an entertainment venue. It might have been a success regardless if it were elsewhere... but we can only speculate.

[@ahmaddeeni]

Advance feudalism, the idea is to concentrate power and force dependence. London is a city state, the rest are subjects. It’s so well devised “the mob” isn’t a factor here like it was in Rome.

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@ahmaddeeni things like ULEZ are a great example of this where even areas which are not London are forced to pay for London.

[@thesenate1844]

​@@SaintGerbilUKwtf does ULEZ have to do with this? The only reason its viable is that London is the only city with a functioning metro system

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@thesenate1844 the ULEZ extends past the London area into surrounding counties, meaning that people who are not living in London, or even Greater London and under a different constituency and county are still having to fund London in order to drive their own car in their own county.

[@TheBelfastBikerOfficial]

0:08 I'm sorry, "pork cannabis sausage"? 😂

[@wilmanman7783]

Why? Just Why?

[@F22ERaptor]

The problem is the City of London - that is different to 'London'. The 'City of London' is a Tax haven province where all the money goes to. That's why it's a financial centre. A solution would be to have Financial centres around the UK. Perhaps regarding the Government, maybe it should move every 5 years to a 'host' county? That way each county will get it's time in the sun, so to speak.

[@Aubrey2004-j4k]

The transport infrastructure is terrible. No access to affordable transport between cities

[@Ukipmiddleleft]

Levelling up meant to bring every area in line with London. That includes wage levels and standard of living. how is that going??

[@darryljones3009]

The word "up" was just a typo.

[@EuroDC1990]

The issue is that it feels like 90% of investment goes to London, and 90% of the leftovers goes to Manchester. Both successful cities that require investment to maintain their statuses, but other cities need investment to be able to compete. Not every city is going to be as big or as successful as London and Manchester but if they can't even try then you're going to breed not just resentment but poverty, both mental and physical health issues, and ultimately increasingly regionalist, populist and potentially extremist views. It's a problem that needs to be taken much more seriously than it is at present. I live in Sheffield and it's unbelievable how little investment we get compared to our neighbour just across the pennines.

[@Commonsense-u1h]

Indeed this is a reason why the Reform vote is growing

[@owensquelch449]

This is why the cancelation of phase 2 of hs2 is so annoying, improving transport links between cities, particularly London would go a long way to spread that wealth out.

[@thesenate1844]

The Tories cancelled it just out of spite so that Labour couldn't claim any success from the results

[@conceptsound5]

Short answer: Yes Long answer: Yes

[@riagrix]

Problem is that London is an international city, not just a city in the UK. It is probably the most culturally significant city in the world and has probably been in the top five most significant cities in the world for hundreds of years. It is difficult to compare London to other places in the UK when it really sits apart from it.

[@1987LOZ1987]

You're right, London is often considered the Financial Capital of the world. Some years it comes 2nd but the reality is London is international compared to the rest of the UK and not really comparable

[@AW-zk5qb]

New York is most influential city in the world

[@AppleAirsoft]

Literally every Why the UK sucks video: Oligarchs.

[@davidbodor1762]

Explains why Russian oligarchs loved to go live in the UK. They must've felt right at home.

[@Gitskreig]

@@davidbodor1762 They love it because the City is the best place in the world to launder their money. The City of London is entirely geared around facilitating the greedy hide their ill-gotten gains.

[@iamnutty8471]

this is pretty much true of most small geography wise countries! shock news dublin, paris, stockholm Considered important to host nations! Australia is big but small population by mass, NZ biggest city isnt political capital but financial one (also nicer place to live) you do get exceptions like Rome vs milan, but that more 3000 years vs 500 year debate!

[@Turkishfella]

As someone growing up in a Turkish household, all of my family back in Türkiye think London is super rich… It kinda annoys me to tell them it’s a rich and poor city because of the inequality but they just ignore me because “I’m only a child and don’t understand economics”

[@Duncan23]

Seriously what is happening to tldr? Recent videos seem to be skimming over a topic, summarising headlines and no longer looking into causes or solitions. I really hope the quality returns soon.

[@shanghaidiscovery2664]

I was gonna say the same. pretty lazy analysis. First comparing the UK to the US (a country with 7 times the population) and to the Netherlands (with 4 times less) is kind of pointless. Also, you have the same issue in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, .etc. Basically almost every country has areas that are richer and concentrate economic and political power. Maybe a better analysis would have been the UK versus Spain, Germany and even Italy.

[@mxjaz82]

I'll let you know the solution we'll be getting regardless if it works or not..... Tax people as hard as we possibly can and import as many people as will fit on our island. I'm sure things will get better 😂

[@rxvvy_]

​@@shanghaidiscovery2664Germany has a completely different political system that the UK and would be an even more unfair comparison

[@ricequackers]

I'm one of those high earning folk in finance in London. I've semi-joked that if the company ever opened an office up in Newcastle or similar I'd happily move up north and even take a 10% pay cut to live like a king up there. My colleagues also agreed citing the quality of life benefits like less congestion and low crime. The problem is that no one seems interested in doing this at all. No one wants to invest or open an office in the further regions of the country. They live in a bubble and for them civilisation ends at the North Circular Road. As the lucrative six figure jobs don't really exist outside of London we're forced to stay within commuting distance of the capital. One exception is a friend of mine who founded a trading platform startup, they have a branch office up in Newcastle. But that's a really rare example, and only really happened because he's not from the London bubble.

[@SaltedCoffee400]

Well nothing strange about this, London is basically a money loundry sceme at this point

[@Leshaun2002]

It's SO hard to get a job here (outside of London). It's mainly care home, factory work, or teaching assistant and for minimum wage. It's making me want to relocate outside of the UK

[@julianshepherd2038]

When London's economy was overheated the government spent £9 billion on the Olympics in London.

[@eliahabib5111]

Out of curiosity where is tldr located?

[@potatohead9551]

If I have a pound every time I hear someone say UK is too reliant on London. I'll have enough to live in London comfortably

[@kevinh4869]

Bring in a law saying that any company that has a base in London and makes X amount of money needs to build another office in another part of the uk. Create 3 or 4 other "Londons" across the UK.

[@dewaard3301]

The problem is that all that money stays in London. And right now, we can't just tax them, because they'll just threaten set up shop elsewhere. We need a worldwide effort to band together and tax wealthy companies fairly, so they can't play us against each other. We tried, and effing Ireland blocked it, together with a couple of other countries perhaps.

[@thesenate1844]

When the EU proposed tax reforms that would have required the UK to enforce its tax rules, suddenly the Brexit campaign got a huge amount of funding out of nowhere. Nothing suspicious whatsoever

[@Greeno999]

As someone who fully works from home with a head office in London (I’ve never visited it), I would suggest that lots of talented people are happy not moving to London or concerned about buying overpriced small properties in the capital city. When opportunity presents itself businesses are too afraid to move away and into other regions.

[@johnsmith-jq1uc]

because we are a service economy, and services only really happen in london. ditto property.

[@hellomynametoby]

Worst part of this personally is being in a low-income household in the South East, you're essentially stuck with no opportunity to leave due to financial limitations of outgoing costs for your area, as well as massive competition for any job openings.

[@mikefish8226]

The government spends a ridiculous amount in money in London on infrastructure which has a multiplier effect.

[@SCP_X1]

England moved away from a manufacturing economy to service economy that is why london has outsized power over rest of the country.

[@buggieyn]

I Love that the first graph says 'North Easy' instead of 'East'

[@heinkle1]

The real problem is that, in the absence of economic growth, we don’t have the tax receipts to invest in the manufacturing that we need to move away from services, but those industries would in any case be uncompetitive. I don’t actually know how the UK gets out of this spiral.

[@ecaeas4439]

We don't need to move away from services to manufacturing 🤦‍♂️! We need the government to invest directly in other areas of the country on a much larger scale to improve the offer other areas of the country to business.

[@omarmansuri7099]

While on a national level it isn't that bad, on the state level, India suffers massively from this. There's basically just one giant city that supports the entire state and leads to resentment on both sides. The people living outside who feel left behind and the people of the city who feel their money is being wasted on far flung villages and towns instead of on them.

[@StimParavane]

One reason - The City of London has too much financial and political power.

[@wongrichx]

The UK is overly reliant on London, and London is overly reliant on financial services. This situation is similar to that of New York City . However, the USA has many more cities, each with its own strengths.

[@Xeza]

This is why remote work can be so important. If you have young people feeling they can move to "cheaper" areas whilst still earning the larger sums that London corporations offer, the local economies of Northern and Western England can begin to benefit by people spending their money there, and once the money is there, Corporations can be more confident moving whole operations to Northern and Western Cities, and draining the power from London. Add a Government incentive for corps to move to other cities, your Birmingham's, Manchesters, Newcastles, Leeds, Bristols, etc. then you can accelerate that. And finally, build the infrastructure within AND between these cities and the Capital and you start to take the power from London. Another option is to move Politics out of London, set up an "English Parliament" or move the UK Parliament to a more central UK region. Build a new administrative capital, create jobs in that area. Take that power out of the South East and spread it about!

[@fateenshareef8716]

Probelm starts with the fact that political+ business+ Financial centre is London. It gravitates all economic activity with it only to London. Americans have a problem with political center being DC and there are already talks of moving some departments of the executive away to new cities.

[@shamanahaboolist]

It's not London. It's the greed of a small number of people living there.

[@GuyM-hp6in]

Two possible key contributors to the current situation: The decimation of manufacturing by successive gov'ts (Thatcher and Blair/Brown are primary culprits that spring to mind). The devaluing of physical trades and the associated shift to ever increasing numbers pursuing academic higher education (university) rather than vocational (trade apprenticeships & old polytechnic type courses). Is it over qualification or, pursuit of the wrong qualification being encouraged by greedy universities? Over qualification might apply for someone working in a supermarket (I've done that, it's a not a picnic) or in a call centre (done this too, mixed experiences), but an inappropriate degree is unlikely to be of much help in the manufacturing/building/construction industries etc.

[@AC-id5ow]

Let's just clarify that this doesn't equate to the whole area of London being nice, desirable and civilised. Far from it. There are minute areas of highly concentrated wealth in London. The rest is just a stab/acid/drug/gang/gun/anti-social area.

[@marksimons8861]

UK is wholly dependent on our successful business relationship with the EU. In its wisdom, the British electorate chose to break that bond and has been left completely in the lurch. Of all the regions, only the London economy has a chance on the world stage, so it is down the slippery slope for everyone else.

[@Binzdogger]

I would argue as a south easterner, Folkestone so as south east as you can get, we are more productive due to our connections being between London and the rest of Europe. Yes we have a lot more higher paying jobs but the costs accommodate that added extra and some. This isn't too much of an issue if you've secured an above average paying job like a tradesmen or professional but if you work in Tesco, life will be much harder here than if you worked in Tesco in Yorkshire. Our rents are higher and our food prices are generally higher, but minimum wage is national, so those at the bottom of the rung down here struggle the most. There's a reason why the southeast also has the largest homeless population. If you look at things in perspective, a house in the southeast will buy you 2 in the north but we share a 12 quid national wage. We aren't all rich, it's just where the rich decide to reside.

[@luluisze]

You can’t really blame businesses for sticking to London, especially when it comes to high-paying jobs for top talent. Who’s going to want to open a business or work in the middle of nowhere if there’s no proper infrastructure? It’s just common sense-governments need to focus on building the basics like railways, hospitals, housing, and schools. They should also give proper incentives, like cheaper train tickets or housing support for workers, and lower business rates to attract companies. You’ve got to make it worth their while, not just tax them heavily and expect them to magically fix up rural areas on their own. But Labour doesn’t seem interested in doing any of that. Instead, they’re all about raising taxes and pouring money into the NHS or union pay-things that don’t really bring any real returns. Their “politics of envy” doesn’t make anyone better off. It just drags the wealthy down, so in the end, everyone’s left worse off.

[@Ifakojesfd]

FOUR reasons? My brain can't cope with this much knowledge

[@christopherwaller2798]

Thing is with all of this is that Westminster is as far removed from people in Poplar as people in Penrith. And being too reliant on London makes things there harder in terms of things like housing. It doesn't help that rail journeys avoiding London are so overcrowded or slow, although East-West Rail will be a good thing, we need other similar projects further north so the Transpennine Express doesn't breach the trade descriptions act. A lot of the time levelling up appeared less about helping the North and more about dragging London down and bashing Sadiq Khan, to make things look more equal.

[@abyssaljam441]

Interestingly London is one of the few places I can't get a job as a naval architect. All the still functioning docks are in poorer areas...

[@DavidROliver]

The UK economy is reliant on London due to mathematics. The combined population of South East England and London represents 28.23% of the total UK population according to the last census. This calculation is based on: • South East England population: 9,483,000 • London population: 9,748,030 • Total UK population: 68,138,200 Meaning over 1 in 4 people in the UK live in the South East (including London) In comparison, the combined population of Manchester and the North West represents 15.01% of the UK’s total population, which is the region that has the largest population outside of the South East corner.

[@ianmckee_84]

London has been the cultural, political, and financial epicenter of the UK for hundreds of years.

[@AndreAmorim-AA]

You mean City of London (London 1.0), not Westminster (London 2.0), as 80% of the UK economy is in services, and fintech is the largest industry in the UK.

[@bbbf09]

Over-reliance on London? . Of course few mention that London was the epicentre and cause of the trillion £ crash to the economy in 2009. The rest of the country filled that gap through austerity that runs on until this day- London picking up none of that rather expensive tab. Not to mention that fact that London uses up - for example - half of the entire national transport infrastructure budget - whilst having only 15% of the population. I'll give you anotherr example from my own business - siting the near £billion Francis Crick biomedical research centre was entirely unnecessary (Cricks Nobel prize work was done in Cambridge) - but was done so anyway --via the hidden guided handof government and particular scientists who live in/near London. This £££billions venture was funded through national taxes - not London taxes. But London is the benfactor - creating more high paying and high value jobs ion London again that were not there prviously. That 'example' - repeated often and many times across London - adds up to a constant topping up of hundred of billions of Uk taxes flowing into London (but not out) - on top of the trillion plus it got to prop its finance industry. This explains all of how London *appears* to be so prosperous and productive. Not some indigenous healthy, robust entrepeneurship - that it like to pretend it always possessed. The truth is the rest of UK doesn't 'need' London. London needs and uses the rest of UK to freeload and to keep on top and grind-down any other pretenders to its throne.

[@Carl-hs420a]

It's that scene from Yes, Minister "The North" where all of the armed services are stationed down south; "you can't ask senior officers to live permanently in the north!".

[@WealthyChronicle]

When will the UK start addressing this imbalance? It's almost like the rest of the country is left fighting for crumbs while London gets all the cake 🍰

[@bbbf09]

As a labour party paid up member - now disillusioned - I'm pretty sure London can carry on being centre of all things (where-the-sun-don't-shine) simply by offering a few well placed luxury goods and exclusive event VIP tickets to certain freebie grabbing hands in gov. And the sh&tshow goes on. Simple.

[@solemndivinity8235]

You can be earning more than the rest of England but it get sucked away by expensive, in particular rent, housing and energy prices. This price inflarion needs to stop.

[@reedehrman805]

Why does this channel have such a tragic lack of juggling? Ben, juggle. We know you want to. Be free.

[@euanduthie2333]

I'd take issue with the idea that investment outside of London would be "obviously" less efficient than continuing to pile everything into London. In terms of Infrastructure, there's a whole lot of smaller projects across the UK that could remove barriers to growth, that never get built. Look at transport- rather than an investment of Billions in buying property and tunnelling through some of the most expensive property in the country to build another Elizabeth line for London, spending a few million on new trains and more staff for rail in the North of England, or Wales, or Scotland, could provide a much bigger increase in service for people who currently have to rely on a couple of ancient, overcrowded 2-car units that turn up if you're lucky. Small investments outside of London could give big improvements and unlock a lot of growth, but London -based media, government and corporates are too blinded by chasing existing success, and an inability to look beyond the M25.

[@TheOpalHammer]

Its almost as if building a train system to connect London to the rest of the country might be a good idea

[@Max11B]

No one says I want to visit the UK. It’s just London 😂

[@EdinburghExile]

Meanwhile, Edinburgh with its hoards of tourists...

[@linrichardson8250]

Manchester at least though is growing faster than the national average however. If you come here then city is absolutely transformed with cranes everywhere and property prices rising faster than London too. The same is true to a degree of Birmingham and Leeds, but they're held back largely due to an allergy to government transport spending, or moving high quality public sector jobs here. Governments see large Urban centres as not being the 'real north', ie because there's no swing seats here. But a lot could be achieved without spending, simply by house building. If those cities could rise to populations of closer to 4 million national productivity would improve massively.

[@aaronsmith9209]

This is actually why the London boundaries need to be changed as economically it's several million more people and dozens of towns larger than the county is. Even the definition of the south east is just wrong, you can't separate towns in the south of Hertfordshire and Essex from the London and South East economy. This is why in my view, devolution hasn't happened yet in much of the south because to have effective regions, it has to be acknowledged the political authorities around the capital are misaligned with the economic ones. This doesn't help to develop regional economies in what should be major cities further afield either. Places like Oxford, Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Brighton should have better infrastructure and services as well.

[@SquidgyPixel]

The added frustration to this is that not everyone who's highly educated necessarily wants to go to London. They might want to go to another city like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, fill in the gap. Surely a good way to get wealth spread around a bit more would be to spread Government departments/services more widely. Say for example, some in London, some in Birmingham, some in Cardiff. You get the picture.

[@MatthewJBD]

This doesn't account for the huge proportion of London's wealth coming from over seas... Typically rich people moving to the UK move to London, it's the capital after all.

[@peoplesrepublicofliberland5606]

Yeah, it sucks when everything is centralized in 1 city. The same thing happened here in PR 🇵🇷

[@onmytravells9429]

Remember "leveling up"?

[@azeria1]

What is the uk economy exactly vape shops and turkish barbers? When you have the highest business electricity prices in Europe what sort of economy can you have

[@cunawarit]

The United Kingdom can arguably be described as a wealthy city tethered to a struggling country. Addressing this imbalance is no simple task, as the nation appears resistant to change on multiple fronts. From NIMBYism that stifles local development, to the country's reliance on outdated Victorian-era infrastructure such as sewers, its inability to build a simple railway line, and the deeply ingrained belief that institutions like the NHS must remain untouched, the modern UK seems to resist adapting or creating anything new. This starkly contrasts with the innovative spirit of the Industrial Revolution-a transition from "hero to zero." While this resistance to change does have its merits-fostering stability and preserving long-standing institutions-it also comes with significant drawbacks. When these systems begin to falter, this entrenched nature exacerbates the issues, delaying the implementation of necessary reforms and hindering progress. Striking a balance between stability and adaptability is crucial, yet achieving that in a society so deeply rooted in tradition is an incredibly hard challenge!

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@cunawarit it's better to say we are a global health service with a country attached. The NHS costs a fortune and provides poor service, yet as you say "cannot be touched".

[@tinkinator40]

Indeed, the analogy is that the UK is a dinosaur made of two parts; a singapore that acts as a capital of a bulgarian-esque economy!

[@jasongarfitt1147]

​@@SaintGerbilUKin 2012 the NHS was performing better in cost per patient than many other health sectors including the US system

[@ecaeas4439]

The NHS doesn't need to be touched - the principle is universal healthcare, and that is a far superior system to the one in the US where people pay an arm and a leg for a bit of insulin or a lifesaving surgery. You're deceitfully painting the entire country as if resistant to change for entirely irrationally / inexplicable reasons. In the case of the NHS, it just needs to be funded properly, and privatisation reforms reversed. It really is simple. When you refer to "victorian sewers", you really mean Met London. If you have any engineering / construction accumen whatsoever, you'll know that in such a costly and built-up area, excavating to replace such a system will always be extraordinarily expensive, if not completely impossible without digging up large parts of metropolitan London. So it has nothing to do with being "resistant to change", it's a financial and practicality issue. "A simple railway line" - completely deceitful / ignorant to the practical challenges of (I assume you mean) HS2. HS2 is (has to) be built in a highly urbanised / population dense corridor of the UK. It's a completely different challenge to the ones faced by countries like Spain or France which have large open expanses of relatively empty land between cities to build their high speed railways into. There is very few parts of the UK that aren't population-dense and urbanised. Constructing a railway in this environment means making design decisions that add to the cost of the project for safety/convenience/public health concerns. Not to imply that there hasn't been a great deal of project mismanagement, but HS2 was always going to be complex and very expensive because building in urban parts of the UK is very expensive.

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@ecaeas4439 do you think that £21m per hour is value for money? If yes, what is your limit? If no, then it needs to be touched. It's the fifth largest employer in the world, not just the UK but the entire world 🌎.

[@Phil_AKA_ThundyUK]

For those feeling bad about your wage outside of London after seeing the median wage - don't! Its very misleading. There are some good resources on why have a look around..

[@emperorvader283]

Obviously london’s wages are higher considering it’s so expensive to live there.

[@hotsaucebeliever]

We need to have a conversation about how GDP is calculated, it's downfalls and how as metric in Productivity calculation leads to very misleading work output metrics. It's not a coincidence that the people who created the metric have the highest contribution to GDP and productivity, it's intentional design by the banking sector

[@infohound41]

Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds and more ought to have their own underground systems like France and Germany do by now.

[@RexImperatorTerra]

London's average income and GDP may be higher, but costs are MUCH higher. Particularly rent. Unless you or your parents are millionaires, or unless you bought a house before 2008, renting in London wipes out that higher income. 40% of my income goes on renting a small studio flat, which wouldn't be the case elsewhere.

[@irispaiva]

Not sure that this will get any traction but I named this phenomenon "Capital Centralization", because all the good paying jobs, industries and opportunities are in the capital, creating a feed back loop. Examples include, Russia with Moscow, Japan with Tokyo and the UK with London. Does this phenomenon has a name?

[@fernbedek6302]

If London has the least affordable housing in the UK, then surely young people looking for good jobs should be moving *out* of London. It doesn't matter if you make more money in London if you end up having even less savings from the cost of living.

[@jasonlib1996]

Part of the solution to the concentration in London is to encourage more remote working. Most of London's economic output is office based services, all which can easily be done remotely. Remote working can make these jobs available nationally instead of regionally, that lack of the need to commute to the city can open people up to being able to live further away in lower cost regions, bringing money to those regions whilst reducing the housing crisis in the southeast. and that's before you consider the congestion and environmental savings by reducing the number of commuters. The UK has high level technology and high speed broadband is common place. (although reduced the more rural you go) We need to take advantage of that to spread these jobs out, spread out the cost of living in certain areas, and over all increase productivity.

[@slashnburn9234]

The average wage in London might be a lot higher than the rest of the UK but how much purchasing power do you have for that money? The company I work for is a multinational with a UK office in Manchester and London and my London colleagues can only afford to rent apartments, whereas I own a house. (I do have a slight age advantage on them but still) I have a feeling that the London bubble is going to burst some time, simply because things like remote work and spiralling housing costs will create a situation where even the kind of middle class office workers can’t afford to live in the city, and also won’t need to. I think we’re in the early stages of that process; hopefully the central government won’t seek to suppress the growth of the UK’s other cities.

[@beeniemen]

What always struck me in London is the insane amount of food option available chains are everywhere and people literally are constantly buying. Even in ny I haven’t noticed that many .

[@cinephileworld9551]

TLDR is based in London, why? With an online market they could have been based anywhere, I can only speculate that the preference is simply because that is where most young educated people either are or want to be. I think no amount of legislation can change this attitude, according it it a problem that will stay and grow.

[@SaintGerbilUK]

@@cinephileworld9551 it also creates a left wing bias, which they acknowledge they have, and try to avoid but are ultimately failing.

[@peteregan3862]

Economic opportunity is delivered by access. Twenty years ago Italy called its high-speed rail network the metropolitana d'Italia - it was linking the country like all of Italy is a metropolitan area. The UK rail strategy is very poor in that the intent is to link every region individually to London. This is the empire model with transport routes radiating from the empire capital. The far better strategy is to consider the islands of Ireland and Great Britian as metropolitan areas and cover them with a roughly rectangular motorway and railway grid. Grid density varies with population density. Ordinary (200 kmh) intercity rail is fine as the aim it to stop every 5 to 10 km - need trains with better acceleration and broaking. To make the grid, build a railway and motorway around the coast of both Islands. Then look at how to modify the road and railway network to make corridors that run N-S and E-W much like the main tube lines in london. Good access across the islands encourages people to live in cheaper places, and businesses to locate in cheaper places as they still have good access to their customers.

[@Kurwajegomac]

No mate it’s London’s UK problem. I would love to see London become un independent state.

[@nEsniAi]

Thanks for not patronising me at the start of your advert this time.

[@carlosdurand434]

UK is a lost cause.

[@jwil4286]

Maybe THIS is why Ed Sheeran was asking to be taken back to London…

[@Random-ne3ed]

London IS the UK. Get good.

[@modadv.s8992]

0:13 I love the North Easy it’s the best part of England (I’m from London)

[@Roy-gi5ul]

We need to consider severely restrict the increase of jobs in the Home Counties and positively discriminate job creation in those other areas where jobs are scarce but skills and qualifications are extant. Artificial it's true, but we need to engineer such a change. Laissez faire will not suffice!

[@fighterguard]

If only those highly educated londoners had access to a very large and wealthy market of hundreds of thousands of companies that hunger for highly skilled workers, and therefore offer very attractive salaries. That would be fantastic if it existed. Unfortunately, Brits are only allowed to live and work freely in the UK.