Northern Independence

 

 

I was sat in my local Wetherspoons. I couldn’t wait to get back in after lockdown. Despite the social media propaganda my need for a cheap breakfast and lager at dawn outweighed any employment rights the staff may have had. As I was downing the Cornflakes and Bourbon, I looked up for a moment and a scruffy man shuffled towards the table. “Aye, Aye I thought, it’s Tim Martin with the personal touch, welcoming me back” but no, few words did this gentleman have but he reached out to give me a piece of paper, an old parchment. I put it down on the table and nodded. He turned and made for the door.

I burped and opened the paper and on the old burnished parchment was a Map.

It was a map that showed quite clearly that Wales was in the North. Cardiff was in the North. I thought it was, because I had always said “I’m going down to London” rather than up. This map confirmed to me what I had always felt that Wales was in the North spiritually. Geographically it was to the West but spiritually, ‘yn eneidiol’ it was in the North. Now there’s true North and Spiritual North. Despite spending 6 years in the South of England and despite meeting ‘nice’ people I always had the feeling that money was King down there.  Your worth was measured in the value of your last Porsche. A stereotype maybe but we are an island of stereotypes and where do they come from anyway? Are they magicked up by Merlin or is there a grain of truth to them?

You’re approaching London, you see the signs for Windsor, Slough, Harrow. Heathrow Airport to your right.  You haven’t quite reached the Billboard pictures of Prince Phillip on the Westway. J.G Ballard would be very impressed. You cannot deny that the cars that join the M4 here are bigger and more expensive. There is an invisible ring of fire around the Capital inside which land, real estate, property and London Weighting Allowance are King.

Just because you can afford to live somewhere does it mean that you should? Second Home Owners in Wales would shout “Yes, because I have the money, I should be allowed to live where I like”. Property Developers from the South buying up houses in the North is not a good look because you are doing it for money not for the altruistic reason of offering cheaper housing to locals who are in desperate need of it. The market dictates. The cattle market is Westminster, right in the heart of the invisible ring of fire. Not far away is Buckingham Palace and the seat of Monarchy. Despite the Military might on display this coming Saturday, they’ll downplay the funeral proceedings to be at one with the people. They have learnt that despite their vast wealth and non accountability, that their ostentatious lifestyle is no longer acceptable to people who do not live in the wealthy boroughs of London.

East Ham might as well be in the North, the visual disparity in wealth between the Kensington High Rd the other side of this vast City as you come out of the Underground. Geographically the further you are away from the centre of power and wealth in the United Kingdom, the more you will suffer. Its power base has satellites in the wealthier parts, Bristol, Bath and the South West. Why are well to do Londoners moving en-mass to Cornwall? Because it fits with their cultural aesthetic? Why don’t they all move to Hartlepool instead? Perhaps we shall see why on May 6^th.