Was that Policy Exchange report so wrong after all?

TrevorH

'Newspaper headline totally misrepresents the story' -- nothing new there then. Every EVERY newspaper does that - merely to reinforce its own and its readers prejudice.

But then that's why we read papers - to reinforce our own prejudice.

Northern cities are predominantly run by left wing management. So why be surprised at their struggle for survival.

As I understand it what was overwhelmingly condemned was the plan to build a million homes plus around the likes of Oxford Cambridge. a preposterous notion which would do untold damage to the Conservative cause if it is not made clear that this is being proposed by a coterie of Liberal Democrats.

So thank you 'Spectator' for producing your own headline saying this report was not 'so wrong after all'.

albert, son of a gypsy

The other misrepresentation was the line that the TORY paper, when in fact it was written by Liberal Democrats for a Tory think Tank.

But a think tank would not be of any use if it just thought along safe lines, would it?

Nicholas

It is not just newspaper headlines that misrepresent stories like this. A general trend in media and business has been towards soundbites and manufactured one-line perceptions rather than rounded, intelligent, informed and considered debate. This, combined with an almost paranoid fear of saying or writing "the wrong thing" lies behind some of the perceptions and prejudices of our modern times.

It no longer matters what you actually say or write. What matters is what people think you say or write and how the multi-million pound media machine whips up hysteria about it. The hysteria is either positive or negative, like the raised or inverted thumbs at the butchery of the Roman circus.

That is why politics, business and even the criminal justice system has descended into a surreal world of constant propaganda and the purveyors of spin are now kings. The dark art of manipulating our perceptions is everything. The reasoned and objective consideration of the facts is nothing.

Ironically it will take courage to break this cycle and bring us back to truth. I don't see that anywhere amongst our leaders.

J H Holloway

It's true. I grew up in a Northern town that had done nowt much for 900 years before, by a fluke, becoming the world's largest produce of commercial vehicles in the free world. (Even we couldn't compete with the USSR's tractor factories..)

Today, all that massive engineering work has shrunk back to a small, highly efficient, factory with a fraction of the employment.

Same with, say, Middlesborough. in 1850 there was nothing there. Then the steel and coal arrived - and then it went away again.
People have always had to follow the work.

It's only since WW2 that governments have wrestled to create (Skemersdale) and re-create (Liverpool) towns and cities.

Ann S

The report is nonsense because it is attempting to impose statist planning on the economy just as surely as the regeneration model is.

If we really want to regenerate the north we need to open up the planning process.
Unlike the south east, there is an abundance of land - a lot of it brownfield - suitable for development within cities and other settlements, so green belts can remain intact. The problem is that highly restrictive planning policies prevent the North taking advantage of its greatest asset cheap land for factories and homes.

This makes it more economic for businesses to relocate there and allows a better quality of life for people who move there. For instance a modern four bedroom detached house in Crook Co Durham can be bought for less than £170000 and a two bed terrace for under £60000.

Excessive increases caused by incomers could easily be averted by opening ip more land within settlement for housing development. Something that is being actively discouraged at the moment because of the ludicrous regional spacial strategy.

Of course that is the last thing the Labour Party wants in the North East, because it does not want its fiefdoms of the unemployed, and public sector workers diluted by more independent and prosperous private sector workers and businesses.

John

The Independent lies ... what a surprise from this despicable rag.

steve

I rather suspected this report would hace a grain of truth in it somewhere, as an exiled scouser, I have long wondered about how big Liverpool "needs" to be. If its main function is to be a port, then it is doing pretty well and I beleive it is shifting a greater tonnage of goods than it has ever done. But the big difference is that with containerisation, you do not need 20 or 30,000 dockers to do the unloading. In other words a big port need no longer be a big city, and somewhere like Liverpool should be left to find its natural population level. Trying to keep people there by chucking money at endless make job schemes, merely traps people.

cuffleyburgers

Surely it's nothing to do with central government how many people live in Liverpool?

Just as it is not the role of central government to find them all jobs.

It can be argued that government has a role in educating them all so they can find their own jobs, and as someone else has already remarked, it most definitely has a role in removing obstacles to economic development by measures such as simplifying and decentralising planning, and reducing taxes and regulation, but that's it surely.

I really want to start hearing this stuff from Messrs Osborne and Cameron. The election is now approaching and the "Labour's meddling has failed and it couldn't be otherwise because government meddling always fails" message must start going across strongly.