Govt plots £15.5bn investment in North West

Level Up? the funding per head (over £1500), NW is ranked at 5th, quite distance from GL, SE, SW. The three regions all over £2000 per head for the period by 23/24 to 24/25.

Does West Lancashire still exist?

Don’t believe the Southern Colonialists. This government, backed up by our Vichy local MPS, continues to renege on all their manifesto policies. They think that building a new market in Bury, is levelling up, what a joke.Where are the platforms on Piccadilly Station, so the Ordsall chord can be properly used. Where is the start of the High Speed train we were promised across the Pennines? Where is equal investment in our schools and local transport? Cheap talk, no action.

But Liang, based on what people contribute \ take out, it’s the SE that suffers, they are subsidising the rest of us already, that’s not exactly fair to ask for more.

I thought you were going to stop using the word ‘plot’. It doesn’t make sense in this context: ‘plan’ is what you mean.

Dear Mr Gove, have you heard of trains?

I have a proposition.

Hope that was your attempt at sarcasm Gilly. I mean the London subsidising the North?, that would be the very definition of Stockholm syndrome…depending on where you come from of course .

Gilly – the north would love to contribute more but we don’t have the infrastructure to allow it. Funds like this help, but probably need to be quadrupled to make a real impact.

Gilly. We subsidised them for two centuries. The North West contributed one third to our output, which subsidised their strawberries and cream.

@February 08, 2024 at 11:44 am
By Elephant

The North is not just Greater Manchester Elephant.
Lancashire eg has actually had the most money it has been given for a long time cf Blackpool, Morecambe, East Lancashire.

Gilly, when the north was more prosperous than the SE during the Industrial Revolution, the SE got plenty of support from the north and then London spent a century centralising power and control of funds and investment in the capital. Your comment reinforces the school of thought that London and the SE accumulated all their wealth on their own from scratch which is demonstrably not true.

@Gilly – LOL… is that not the whole point of ‘levelling up’? To provide additional funding to areas outside of London and the SE so that productivity increases and, as a country we don’t remain reliant on one region for the vast majority of our GDP.

This Government will spend any amount of money on roads despite it saying there isn’t any cash for HS2.

Gilly must be laughing her socks off. She drops bombs which I can only are tongue in check and you guys give it oxygen………don’t do it

Stockholm syndrome,? I think it’s rather closer to Trollhättan. The Government will tell you how they work the figures out is based on population and good science. It’s actually based on nonsense and fairy tales…oh and also vested interests …yeah those.

Why do most of our taxes, fees, profits go down South in the first place. Make the UK into a Federation, like most other European states. Even the USA, our model utopia, is a federation.

The point of levelling up is to provide the same opportunities, then it’s upto the people to make the most of it, Manchester has those opportunities in abundance, handouts are no good, there has to be a economic return or you’re shovelling cash into a furnace

Totally agree with Elephant’s comments below. I would reserve judgement on this until we see action on the ground. Treasury thinking is pre-set against investing outside of London. So individual Departments and Ministers may well be genuine in their aspirations, but a much more powerful malign force in the form of the Treasury will be hard at work aiming to curtail or cancel that investment. And Labour getting into power will not change anything. If you read Andy Spinoza’s great book about Manchester’s regeneration – if anything – it could be worse as the Labour Central London machine have been offended by Manchester’s ability to work with any Govt – including Conservatives. Prescott and others being particularly upset and determined to punish Manchester.

Governments are there to represent the people. All of the people not just those in a particular region , it’s literally nothing to do with handouts. It’s called investing in your country and using that investment to stimulate growth and further investment.This isn’t difficult stuff.

The main reason the North West is not performing at its full potential is connection. Until the appalling transport is sorted out here we will remain in second gear.We create 22 percent of the UK’s self-made millionaires. Lancashire at 8 percent creates more than the South West and Wales combined, and GM on 7 percent about the same. We are the most creative region in my view, in the whole of Europe, if not, we are easily the most creative in Britain. We have more sporting giants than some continents and we are ruthlessly competitive, anyone watching the last Olympics saw us win almost three quarters of the country’s medal tally. There was a school in Oldham which won more gold medals than some countries. Moving people in this region is the nightmare, poor trains, unconnected towns, shabby neglect of our motorways, which are now car parks, for most of the day, and the betrayal of HS2, which is the worst reneging of a manifesto pledge in my lifetime. Devolution has helped Manchester and Merseyside to a lesser degree but it is piecemeal and is not region wide. Until we rid ourselves of Westminster micromanaging everything we will continue to lag our European peers.

Too little too late