The North

luka

Well-known member
i dont consider newcastle to be in the north. theyve got far too much life in them plus they invented viz.
 

luka

Well-known member
whats been interesting me a bit recently is the fake counties, regions which probably dont
exist at all. they have names and occassionally you might meet someone who claims to come
from one of them but they have no stereotypes associated with them, you couldnt point to
them on a map (becasue they dont exist) they have no famous landmarks or cities etc.
here is a list of the counties of england

 

luka

Well-known member
as you can see a surpisingly large proprtion of the so called english counties are in fake completely fictional, a shoddy ruse.
 

luka

Well-known member
can you point to it on a map? yes. does it have its own hilarious national steroetypes attatched to it? yes. has it got famous cities and landmarks? yes.
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Laura Barton once wrote a piece about the north that seems to made up entirely of lines for private eye's Pseuds Corner. Trigger warning: it's almost unreadable

But what stands out to me is that, although the language is tarted up, in summary it provides the incisive observationy "People from up north are friendly and warm and open, and people from London are closed, cold and unfriendly ".
 

catalog

Well-known member
In the 80s, the wispa chocolate bar was available in The North only and not in London. This was the case for several years.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I think my least favourite place in the north is Liverpool. I know this is going to piss off Scousers, but I just don’t get anything about it. I thought the music was crap – Beatles, Julian Cope, the Las, the Zutons…it’s a long, depressing list.

Everything seems like a bad copy of London. Echo & The Bunnymen = poor man's Psychedelic Furs. Toxteth Riots = poor man's Brixton Riots. Benjamin Zephaniah = poor man's LKJ. Hollyoaks = poor man's Grange Hill.

The city is boring and it’s the only place I’ve been north of Reading where people in pubs did head swivels and gave me dagger glares as soon as they heard my accent (something I was warned about as a naive, unworldly brat when going to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle... but it never happened when I went to those places?). Why is everyone there so pissed off?

That said, it was still miles better than Southampton.
Isn't Benjamin zephaniah from Birmingham?

Liverpool is not really the North to me, or its borderline. Liverpool is almost it's own country like London. They consider themselves special do the scousers.

One nice thing about it tho is that the weather is relatively pleasant, especially in comparison to Manchester there are often nice fluffy clouds and a blue sky, on the same day as its raining in Manchester.

It always really surprised me about Liverpool how the off licences all have bulletproof glass up, so you go in and ask for what you want.

The two cathedrals in Liverpool are very impressive, specially the wigwam, as is the Picton reading room in the library.

1280px-Picton_Reading_Room_from_gallery_4.jpg


Although it's maybe a bit too grand, whereas the Manchester one is more functional.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I can't think of a single band or music act from Liverpool that I have much time for. Interesting that acid house, rave, techno, jungle seemed to miss it out? You go straight from the post punk bands, which were all much inferior to Manchester, to things like the Las or cast or lightning seeds and there's no dance music anywhere.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I was going to wait until I got some maps sorted out which explain things better, but I haven't been able to do that...

So anyway, my new theory of the North is that it is the M62 belt, but crucially only from just west of Manchester to just east of Leeds.

So I'm modifying Will Alsop's theory of the entire M62 as a city, cos that doesn't make sense to me.

That road is only busy between the points mentioned, so I'm considering the Liverpool-Manchester and Leeds-Hull sections as "offboarding" and "onboarding" respectively. They are in a sense outro and intro.

The main song is Manchester-Leeds.

So in this way of looking at things, somewhere like York is not the North, because it is too far North, and a different sort of place to that belt I'm talking about.

There is actually historical precedent for this way of looking at things: one thousand years ago, if you wanted to get to York from London, you would go by ship rather than over land.

Im also discounting Sheffield because of its poor showing in the recent poll. Its also too far from the M62.
 
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