Really, the state should fund healthcare? That's awfully socialist of you.

You try living up here. Every fucker is either on benefits or in the payroll of the public sector.

No wonder everyone here votes Labour, how can they not?

Here is one person's view on why Scots don't vote Conservative.

http://rightlinks.co.uk/linked/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=175&forum=1&post_id=603#forumpost603

I guess it is similar in the North of England as well.

It's not just the British state which tries to create a dependency culture up in slag-heap land - it's Brussels too.

Mind you, Northern Ireland is the really horrifying welfare dependency.

Speaking as a southerner who voluntarily relocation to the communist heart land four years ago I can confirm all that you say.

However, you forgot to mention one other important difference. The beer up here is shit too. A choice of one or at the most two identical, gassy smooth flow beers served at 1degC is the standard pub offering.

So why did I volunteer for this hell? Well, there are many good points. Low cost of living, much friendlier people than southerners, no traffic jams, and a more laid back approach to life to name but a few.

I thought northerners were friendlier than us southerners, that has certainly my experience.

Northerners are friendly - i have lots of Northern friends, and Newcastle is my favourite night out. They are still a bunch of pinkos though. And the beer's crap.

Now now - half the people up here might be on benefits thanks to Stalinist New Labour, but one thing that definitely IS better is the ale.

That white stuff at the top of your pint, that's called a "head". Makes it taste better. And you still get change from £2 for a pint.

Mr. a northerner,
That white stuff at the top of your pint is 50% air, 49.5% CO2, and 0.5% flocculents (Fairey liquid).
The profits of northern breweries are inflated by about 3% thanks to this practice.
As a free marketier, and an honorary northerner, I congratulate the breweries for their enterprise, but I still reserve the right to complain.

And you get a head on a well kept hoppy southern ale - even without the use of a sparkler. The trouble is finding a landlord who takes the trouble to keep his ale, a live product, properly.

Dude, I cannot sit still and let you insult the North without adding some balance. It may not be paradise up here, but every time I think of Manchester's faults, I also think "At least I'm not living in London." Why anyone even halfway intelligent would want to live in London is beyond me - everything costs at least twice as much as it does in the real Britain, there's no decent food to be had anywhere, it's hard to move around, it's overcrowded, it's infested with more politicians, senior civil servants and media scumbags per square mile than anywhere else, no-one there is able to speak proper English, and the "people" there are so degenerate that they actually voted for Ken Lingingstone as mayor! Worst of all, London serves as an obstacle to anyone driving from the North to some of the nicer parts of the South East - I once spent two hours crawling around the M25, just so I could get to Kent. The place needs demolishing.

And if we're talking about people with drive, intelligence, enterprise etc, exactly which part of the country was Britain's first astronaut from? I don't think she was from the South, was she? Helen Sharman's of good Northern stock, and therefore qualified to represent our great country in space.

Also, the NHS should be privatised. Yesterday if possible, tomorrow teatime at the latest.

Yes but The Business showed Yorkshire gets little more than the England average and less than London - the Labour MPs in Yorkshire have done it little good.

Still Scotland gets better returns on its MPs.

Yes momentary academic, not like in the USA where employees pay little towards healthcare and it is tax-subsidised employee benefit - whereas in Europe it is paid from post-tax income with far higher contributions from employees and without county hospitals being funded out of property taxes

Citizen Stuart (and everyone else). I am not insulting northerners, just the political culture of the north and scotland. There are lots of great and talented northerners, they just live and work in the south.

Mr Citizen Stuart,

Surely the fact that Britain's first astronaut comes from north of the Watford Gap proves everything this post is trying to say.

To become a space cadet Miss Sharman must be of exceptional brilliance, supreme athletic ability and probably good looks as well.

But look just how far she felt she had to travel to get away from the north of England.

RM

PS And despite squillions of dollars spent on research, NASA still haven't managed to make a beer that keeps its head in zero gravity.

It might be a good idea to be thinking about a British republic before a northern republic.

I'm sure all you northerners will be out and about on Republic Day next Friday to make this happen!!!

www.republic.org.uk/rday

Scotland is cash maker for the UK. The South is given subsidies and it has the HQs. It is the English who get subsidies. z

Not to forget 'London weighting', an anticompetitive sticking plaster if ever there was one. I can sort of understand it for workers in vital public services but who cares that a bank clerk can't afford a place within 50 miles of the Cornhill? Boo hoo, let the market do its job and send those jobs somewhere else.

Live in the spiritual heart of socialism, though, and it must be said you have a point.