[Closed] Levelling up fund for the North....

What you on about?

Rishis leveling up fund... announced today..

Actually its only 660 million for next year....

No doubt going the same way as the "Towns fund" I think it was called, to Conservative marginal seats.
Never trust a Tory.
APF

just write a begging letter for a new bus shelter

Must be sponsored by your local MP.

It’s just a fund for new Tory MPs to get visible “wins” in their seats, ready for the next general election, while local services are further decimated as round 2 of austerity strips local authority provision to the bone.

And according to R4 just now:
The maximum project size is something like £20 million.

And it can be applied for by any area (not just the north).

Not going to do much is it?....

Crude, simplistic electioneering.
How much is net new money?
I have no doubt that at least some will be a re-allocation from existing budgets/commitments.
£4 billion won't go far.

As someone said, never trust a Tory.

On a derelict building in town there was graffiti on it dating back from the 80's thats only just been painted over.

It said "Tory scum out".

It's as true now as it was nearly 40 years ago.

Talk about pissing in the wind, that's an insult

What kelvin said

Toraí is an Irish word and where the word Tory comes from.

It means an outlaw, crook, robber.... never has it been more appropriate.

Time to.get up a GoFundMe page for the Northern Powerhouse...

Labour MP - sorry, you application doesnt quite meet the criteria.
Tony MP - crack on old chum, he's some dosh to spaff on a vanity project, its not quite enough for long term investment that could bring tangible improvements but good enough to convince the mouth breathers in your constituency to vote conservative again.

Expect the mechanisms to be put in place this year with some headline grabbing payments, it'll then go quiet for a while only kick into overdrive in an election year.

Stop whining, if you're a northern ballet dancer/trough wiper you could retrain as a brain surgeon and move to pimlico with that £500. Easy.
Also they're moving large quantities of poor people's brains north with benefit reforms so you could stay up here and pocket the moving costs. Quids in.

Too late.. the entire ensemble from the Northern Ballet has retrained for cyber roles

Let them drink Tennents Super.

grum
Free Member

What kelvin said

Exactly

I expect that ‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick, keen as he’s always been to improve the lives of the disadvantaged, has already earmarked which poor deprived northern high-dep areas the billions will be going to.

Alderley Edge, Wilmslow, Harrogate, Buckingham, Surrey...

I'm from and live in Leeds,silly sods up here voted tory to get brexit done and they will have to live with the consequences of that,I have absolutely no sympathy for them

Conveniently for The North, all you have to do to level up is kill 20 rats. But what to spend it on? I think I'm going to raise my Charisma.

Basically they’re offering us a tiny fraction of what they’ve lopped off the budgets of northern councils since 2010 (while leaving the budgets of leafy southern Home Counties towns untouched, obvs) and expecting us to be grateful for the loose change they found down the back of the sofa

This is how this has played out, year in year, for the last decade

I notice I'm in that little dab of orange second right from London.

Remarkably it's a Tory stronghold. Never understood how. I suspect a lot of those that actively despise them (Tories) are so disenfranchised that they simply don't vote. Unlike the Tory faithful.

The cuts here have been noticeable, especially the safety nets that used to exist for people simply aren't there anymore. Looking at the far deeper cuts shown on that map, it must be pretty apocalyptic there. I note the Labour heartlands in London have been hit hard too.

When you get tories berating labour councils for not keeping to budgets it really makes you see why. That said, these days even Tory councils are falling foul of that.

Austerity V2.0 is going to be appalling.

Let them drink Tennents Super.

Youtube led me onto this....

Can't see them being able to make this sort of thing in the woke era!

£4 billion won’t go far.

Buys you about 1/10th of Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Question is, which tenth?!
Leeds, you will go on my first whistle. Hull, you will go on my second whistle.

Northeners, READY! 3, 2, 1, FIGHT!

Misprint innit?

Should read leveling off.

Fund is to pay for bulldozers.

I know this has been said a lot but I can't believe we are not going to see large civil unrest/ strikes over the years to come.

Am I wrong?

Not defending the cuts but it's worth noting that the disparities are caused by the relative proportions of councils income that come from direct income (council tax/business rates) Vs central government. The southern shires get a higher take per capita in direct income than many other areas, this means when government schemes are cut, they suffer less proportionally. The reverse will happen meaning if you give everyone the same back, the dark spots on the map suddenly would show larger net improvemts.

The problem is, levelling up under this government has to date seen larger budget increases going to exactly the shires that haven't been hit so bad, as the government is evening out their per capita settlements by increasing their allowances unevenly to erase previous inequality that favoured poorer areas which is bonkers frankly, even if some think some notion of fairness trumps common sense.

I know this has been said a lot but I can’t believe we are not going to see large civil unrest/ strikes over the years to come.

Am I wrong?

When I've seen these type of comments in the past I've dismissed them as people reliving their anti-Thatcher youthful fantasies, but I'm beginning to think there is no other way. Just feels that those at the bottom are now so crushed, and blame has been deflected so far, that there is no one ready for the fight.

The disaffected now have smartphones and hundreds of TV channels to keep them distracted whilst the Govt rip the country apart lining their own pockets.

In the 80s there was nothing to do, so if there was a protest and you had the time and the inclination to join it you would

When I’ve seen these type of comments in the past I’ve dismissed them as people reliving their anti-Thatcher youthful fantasies

The thing is, they weren't fantasies.

An abiding memory of my youth is of seeing my next door neighbour being carried into his house by two of his sons, absolutely covered in his own blood because his head had been stoved in by a copper on a picket line.

I doubt we'll see that again though.

PP - I have similar memories from being at school and the school bus passing the rows of black maria's full of tooled up stormtroopers heading for the picket lines. I don't think we'll ever see that again, thankfully.

Next year is going to be interesting. Covid is hitting the north hard with most areas never really coming out of lockdown, and unlikely to do so until next year. The toll on the economy is going to be vast and devastating! Small businesses are going to go down like dominoes, with no government assistance. You can feel the anger building about that. The new 'Red Wall' Tory MPs are all getting very twitchy. So they should be!

Also: the way it's been done. They've given up even pretending theres any negotiation or consultation. From now on, after Andy Burnhams shenanigans, everything is now dictat from on high and 'do as you're bloody well told, you uppity peasants!!'

Add in a No Deal Brexit that is going to hit hardest in the places that always get hit hardest and all the ingredients for a right royal kick off.

The question is if anyone can be arsed. We've been shat on from on high since the 80's

The new ‘Red Wall’ Tory MPs are all getting very twitchy.

Theyre not helping themselves either. Our new boy Tory RIchard Holden has got only one policy - reopen the Consett > gateshead stretch of the old trainline. He is fixated on that while the economy round him burns. Madness.

Add in a No Deal Brexit that is going to hit hardest in the places that always get hit hardest and all the ingredients for a right royal kick off.

To be fair (large parts of the) North did vote for both Brexit and the Tories, so they're only getting what they voted for.....

Does reduce my level of sympathy by quite a large amount.

binners
Full Member

Basically they’re offering us a tiny fraction of what they’ve lopped off the budgets of northern councils since 2010 (while leaving the budgets of leafy southern Home Counties towns untouched, obvs) and expecting us to be grateful for the loose change they found down the back of the sofa

This is how this has played out, year in year, for the last decade

Essex CC had a 49% cut from 2013 to 2016 then a further 84% lopped off from 2016 to 2020. Hardly 'untouched'.

https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/14756404.huge-cuts-council-funding-way/

Theyre not helping themselves either. Our new boy Tory RIchard Holden has got only one policy – reopen the Consett > gateshead stretch of the old trainline. He is fixated on that while the economy round him burns. Madness.

"Policies" like that are classic distractions.
You immediately create two opposed groups - petitions, campaigns, maybe even a bit of fundraising. It ties up councils in planning for their new / re-opened trainline, coming up with designs and wishlists for stations and associated supporting infrastructure. Everyone gets very excited one way or the other.

Then it will quietly disappear because rail projects are always massively long term - you're talking 10 years to get anything out of Network Rail, plan/design/develop the scheme, get it through Parliament in a Hybrid Bill, get it passed the reams of planning committees and appeals and protests and finally get spades in the ground by which time the politician has long since buggered off, the country has been further asset stripped and no-one has noticed because they're all het up about some meaningless branch line.

Same thing is going on at the moment with the Monsal Trail.

Let’s be brutally frank... whoever these utterly corrupt ****s announce any serious spending you know that it’s just another bent ruse to funnel a shitload of taxpayers money into their mates pockets

I doubt the areas that really need it will end up seeing a penny of it

Same thing at Blyth with the "rail line" load of bollocks.

@ crazy-legs

'Same thing is going on at the moment with the Monsal Trail'.

Can you expand on this please.

As a cyclist who has ridden in the area from time to time but do not live in the area I am interested to know 'what gives'.

Thanks

It's just for Jenrick and his mates isn't it?

Can’t see them being able to make this sort of thing in the woke era!

It appears so. The layers of Great British snobbery and stereotypes they are lampooning seems to go over the heads of some.

There are groups of people in this country who revel in stirring up divide, egged on by turncoat/bitter/opportunist cheerleaders.

One of my grandparents who lived in a deprived northern area was interviewed by a BBC news reporter. She (RIP) was erudite, informed and progressive. Of course the news editors decided that wasn't fit for national news. Instead they focused on interviews of toothless people who could barely string a sentence together, as proof of the type of people/scum who live in her area.

It’s just for Jenrick and his mates isn’t it?

Are you seriously suggesting that ‘Honest Bob’ isn’t entirely straight and above board? It would be scandalous to even suggest that all this money will end up in the pockets of his mates

I'm about to move to Newark - jenrick's constituency; can't wait for the day when he or anyone of his constituency team are out door knocking.

Your moving "to" Newark... well fancy that?

Just kidding...

Apologies half my family are from Ashington (Ashganistan) and the rest are from the posh part of South Shields - Marsden... so i really shouldn't comment

My parents lived in Wallsend so it's all relative...no pun intended.

@ crazy-legs

‘Same thing is going on at the moment with the Monsal Trail’.

Can you expand on this please.

As a cyclist who has ridden in the area from time to time but do not live in the area I am interested to know ‘what gives’.

Thanks

@drnosh - few articles on the BBC about it, this is the most recent:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-54064786 which actually mentions the distraction nature of the announcement.

The people behind this and several other rail reopening plans are the Campaign for Better Transport https://bettertransport.org.uk/media/05-february-2019-rail-reopenings-report

A lot of their output is the usual thing of having to make noise to get funding. Sustrans do the same with cycling news which usually translates to giving themselves a big pat on the back when 100m of towpath is resurfaced.

Keep the topic in the public consciousness and obviously MP's like to get on board because it makes them sound in touch with local issues but they don't actually have to do anything other than the occasional photo opportunity in front of some abandoned railway station!

That photo sums up the Govt; fat, middle-aged, white, male, privileged, ignorant, scruffy

The miners were easier to dismiss because mines were often out of the way, communities were distinctive, only one or two leaders to be disemboweled by the press. This time round it's different. Job cuts, austerity, deregulation, housing issues, are much more widespread and a lot of people must be wondering how so much can be spaffed on whatever when nothing is coming their way and how they've been misled.
I can't imagine there won't be protests but what form they'll take and who'll organise it? In the 70s the LP was quite sectarian and kept a low profile and I don't suppose Sir is out shopping for demo wear. The usual pattern is the police get a bigger than average rise and then they're expected to go out and wield the big stick.
There will be enough people (and certainly students) who are opposed to the government to generate a popular movement that challenges what's going on and this could evolve into a something organised and effective but it won't be based around or supported by the parliamentary parties.

I doubt there will ever be public disorder on the scale of the Miners strike, they (family members) had a sense of community that i don't see anywhere in the North of England currently added to the fact that they were literally scared of "nowt"

They were better educated as Unions always understood the value of this.

Its long gone any desire for confrontation has been removed.

You need a mass threat to a mass group with little to loose.

If you dont have all three nothing will kick off.

Miners strike was mass closure, mass of miners, no alternative jobs.

Polltax was mass increase of cost, mass residents, no cheaper alternative.

Interesting, you do wonder how identity politics has divided and distracted so many, I'm a this you're a that, has just been taken on uncritically by so many. It is the opposite of class consciousness but it suits those with a racist agenda and it has a wonderful way of giving ad homs to shut down debates.

I have had "my kids didnt have the opportunities your kids had" thrown at me by a person who came from exactly the same background as me... i pointed out that was because he was too selfish and ****ing bone idle to help his kids with GCSE/A level/Uni and spent too much time in the Pub.

The same man wouldn't let his kids go on the French trip as France was shit and Uni was a waste of time apparently...

Bump this morning.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/levelling-up-boris-johnson-nao-b2005274.html

More regions to have an elected mayor that can be blamed rather than the govt.

TBF, I think having more local decision making and elected accountability is a good thing.

I agree Westminster will both use it to blame and pay lip service, but mayor and further devolution of power is a good thing generally.