Explain to me "being Northern".

Well kind of, though not as much as some would have you believe.

2. But why?

Industrial base in North, further from metropolis.

Works on some levels, ie. predominantly working class, poorer, speak with comedy accents, etc.

But doesn't work on other levels - i.e. the US South is poor and working class because it is/was primarily agricultural, while the UK North is/was primarily industrial. I think probably a better analogy would be the midwest Rust Belt. Detroit = Manchester or Sheffield in so many ways.

The south (mainly London to be honest) is flash (for the working classes) and poncey (middle and upper), expensive and full of galleries exhibiting a brick and callling it art.

x-post

The North: Billy Liar, A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night Sunday Morning, The Full Monty, Billy Elliot.

The South: Blow Up, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Performance.

Jim, I also get the piss taken out of me when I go back to Wolverhampton ffor loosing my accent and wearing daft clothes (to be fair I wore a lot of really daft clothes as a teenager, but people seem to have forgotten that).

in the south people are more uptight and it still rains quite a bit, and people normally are less outspoken, but still rude. despise northern people. pronouces "bath" as "baaarrrrrthhhhhhh"

All of this is only half true, obviously.

to be fair I wore a lot of really daft clothes as a teenager, but people seem to have forgotten that

Me too! I was much more of a pretentious knobpot when I was 14 than I could ever bring myself to be now, but I got away with it then, and don't any more.

I guess the Midlands has more in common with the north than the south, in terms of the accents, industry, provincial attitudes? I don't really know as I've (shamefully) never been oop north!

Ah, but wait...that's a form of affection. It sort of means "we're good enough friends that I can say really offensive things to you and you'll know I don't mean them, so won't take offense". I think it's quite an important way of forming bonds in an environemt where actual affection is seen as "being soft".

wales: somewhere in the west, pronounces "bath" as "ballwwuuuyyggwnth". keep romances within the farmyard. crap at football (hopefully).

Actually, I've no idea.

Liverpool scally:
Youse look well gay in that, la. What you got on soft lad?

Posh bird:
You are *such* a crashing bore Mimi, but I do love you.

Upsides to the north = cheap, nicer countryside. Downsides = grindingly poor, not as cheap as it used to be.

I don't know if there's that much to stereotypes of the blunt northener anymore.

I must confess that if I were single, and had a decent job lined up, I'd move to London like a shot.

Actually, I'd look for work in W Europe if I were in that situation, but for the purposes of the n/s divide in the uk, blah.

xxpost

fucking traitors, that's what they are

(or fookin' traitors)

that's living in scotland for you. i've forgotten my roots.

Haha, as opposed to working class northerners who are known for their racial tolerance...

(also kidding!)

xxpost

I think when I was growing up, we still saw the london working classes as being better off than us northern working classes, and so still resented them (cf loadsamoney, etc). That was the 80s though. There's also a convenient blind eye turned by the north to any southerners who really are worse off...but that's not entirely the fault of northerners, since as far as cultural representaion goes, the south is very much overrepresented (most tv comes out of london, etc), but then despite that, the poor south is as underepresented as the north (there's eastenders/coronation street, but that's pretty much it). So the impression given is that yeah, everyone south of watford is rolling in it.

I think as soon as you do get out of the north, it becomes pretty apparent that's not really what things are like. But the majority of northerners never do. So it's just blinkered insularity really. But then that's one of the things that helps the sense of community, so I suppose it's swings and roundabouts.

(many xposts)

Wigan is probably the harshest northern town ive been outside scotland, and its full of thugs.

Well I was back in Worcester at the weekend and can confirm that racism is alive and well among working class West Midlanders as well. So yes, cunts all round.

That's so obvious they never even stated it!

Anyway Cornwall/Devon != "The South". Cornwall/Devon = "The West"

Wait until you try going back home again afterwards.

Fuck yes. I'll be over to your desk with a Stanley Knife...

xpost

i'll tell your team leader when she gets back if there's any more talk like that.

Lancashire vs Yorkshire
Liverpool vs. Manchester
Manchester vs Leeds
Newcastle vs Sunderland vs Middlesbrough vs Cleveland

The thing that unites all Northerners, however, is their disdain for Southerners.

that sounds kind of posh!

the south is really just that london plus the home counties. and a few marginal areas. the north is much, much bigger.

Yeah, that was part of it, with a lot of people playing up the stereotypes massively with northern implying poor, working class, Labour-voting, hard as fuck lads, no-nonsense good-time three chord tunes for straight, white beered-up blokes; and southern implying well-off, middle class, public school, Tory, arty, camp, cocktail sipping soft lads playing wanky music for students.

The reality was pretty different.

Best quote from a Scouser on this subject: "We should never have built that bloody ship canal."

I doubt anyone on this thread is suggesting that no one in the North produces art or is gay. Not that they were very good examples on the gayness front.

-- Anna (Fieldingann...) (webmail), September 1st, 2005 2:57 PM.

What do you use Anna, axle grease?

One thing I think a lot of Americans didn't get about the whole Madchester thing was how much Northern pride was mixed up in it, that the cultural (or at least pop-cultural) center of the country was for once somewhere other than London -- especially coming at the end of the Thatcher era, which from what I could tell in Manchester felt to a lot of Northerners like living under occupation. For all the Bush-bashing you can find in the U.S., I've never experienced the kind of sheer seething rage at the government that Maggied elicited up North.

there's enough internal county rivalry too. which reminds me of one of my favourite ever jokes (to be read, preferably, in a bradford accent):

Q. can you name three english football teams with swear-words in their name?

A. arsenal. scunthorpe. and FUCKING LEEEEEEEEDS

Roll on Food Science 2006....

Friends of my parents still cross themselves when her name is mentioned. At a FAP the other day the possibility of installing Dance Dance Revolution on her grave (as soon as there is one) was considered sound.

I DO THIS!

I DO THIS!

therefore: no.

xpost

that's it! man, it's like '93 all over again.

THAT'S THE BEAUTY OF IT

Definitely right above that there is real geographical beauty, as indeed there is in the south - of a more remote, rugged variety (certainly compared to the Home Counties, anyway). There is a great variety between the following: Lake District, Cumbria, Northumberland, North Yorks., rest of Yorks, Humberside, Tyne and Wear etc...

It's deeply unfortunate that the BNP seem to have found significant support in the North (only a few seats in London comparably, in the South), particularly in West Yorkshire. Which does reflect a certain social deprivation and hostile ignorance, particularly felt in towns such as Burnley, Oldham, Keighley, certainly parts of Sunderland - where I currently live.

How does this sound? Southern middle class liberals and centre right = New Labour. Northern middle class liberals = Lib Dem. Northern centre right = Tory. All working class = Old Labour. Not sure if I mean it, just wondering what it looks like written down.

And I don't see any point in playing out old Marxist battles. Of course there was exploitation. That's not the point.

in 1990, when i began taking a serious interest in drinking (i was 15), lager really was "for puffs and trendies". none of my mates drank it: it was trophy, tetley and bods all the way. if we were on cans, it was bentleys bitter (40p a tin, if memory serves).

but that's totally changed now: from what i can work out, blackpool is as awash with cheap continental pisswater as everywhere else, and a good, honest, warm, eggy-tasting, guaranteed-to-make-you-ill pint of watered-down bods is a thing of the past.

since when has "civic-minded" minded "incredibly exploitative", philistine, and politically dependent on the posh twits from down south (who the enterprising arkwrights had no trouble integrating into first chance they got.)

Living in Manchester, I was surrounded by the vestiges of that.

and the flip of the public architecture is, obviously, the astonishing deprivation of the workers who they exploited. you can't just skate over that as an old marxist battle.

and it goes without saying the northern working class had to make its own culture.

" The north begins wherever it is that people start saying 'bath' instead of 'barth', and 'book' instead of 'buck'"

Definitely Leicestershire then, I think.

The Mirror has always been Labour (at least during my lifetime). In the 80s The Sun was as right wing as The Daily Mail. In fact, it still is really right wing, it just wants to support whichever party wins because that serves Murdoch best.

the mirror was set up as a slightly more feminine versh of the mail, but became lefty during the 30s, i think

You wot!?

only if you take the west-coast train, perhaps.

Bacon butties = grease definitely, you can't waste good grease.

easy

1. MORRISONS
2. HALF RICE HALF CHIPS

I have a friend from Lancashire who once drew a map of England, drew a line from the Wirral to the Humber estuary and declared that was the boundary between north and south.

However he subdivided the south into 2 parts by drawing another line between the Severn estuary and the Wash. The midlands part was where Dirty Southerners lived, and the south was where Southern Poofs lived. So I'm just dirty, not gay.

Northampton is totally southern, btw, opposing football fans regularly give us the "Plastic Cockneys" chant.

...but the point is that here in teh South we have two different vowel sounds for the word 'putt' and the word 'put'. The former we use in words like 'love','come','run' etc. and the latter we use in words like 'push','good','bull'. In teh North there are different ways of pronouncing the latter sound, but you don't have the former sound. So 'put' and 'putt' sound the same when spoken by a northerner.

nah mate, starts/ends proper where the London postcodes do - everything is else is merely riding on the coat-tails.

Pizza Hooht!

northernmost point: the swimmer
westernmost point: king's kebab
southernmost point: the dogstar
easternmost point: mile end tube station

like that Rab C Nesbitt episode where the family take a trip to the Highlands but end up irked by well bred TAs out on manouevres.

Also, I grew up south-south-west and have a mixture of short vowels and long vowels, but that's more because I accomodate too much. I know it's a bit silly to point this out on a thread that plays so much on generalisations, but the isogloss pertaining to vowel quality in 'book' is hardly a straight line running horizontal above the Watford Gap, or wherever it is The North begins.

Anyway, The Danelaw. That was a proper divide. Bring back Watling Strete! Vive La Dane!

And everyone in Edinburgh might as well be English. As might most of Glasgow's west end. And half the people in Aberdeen are English riggers.

Oh how I love the British obsession with authenticity.

-- grimly fiendish (simonmai...), September 1st, 2005. (later)

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Jungle life
I'm far away from nowhere
On my own like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek
I play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon
Jungle life
I'm living in the open
Native beat that carries on
Burning bright
A fire the blows the signal to the sky
I sit and wonder does the message get to you
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Night to night
Gimme the other
Gimme the other
Chance tonight
Gimme the other
Gimme the other
Night to night
Gimme the other
Gimme the other world
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Jungle life
You're far away from nothing
It's all right
You won't miss home
Take a chance
Leave everything behind you
Come and join me
Won't be sorry
It's easy to survive
Jungle life
We're living in the open
All alone like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek
We play along while rushing cross the forest
Monkey business on a sunny afternoon
Night to night
Gimme the other
Gimme the other
Chance to night
Oh yeah
Night to night
Gimme the other
Gimme the other
Night tonight
One playin
Night to night
Gimme the other
Gimme the other
Chance to night
Gimme the other
Gimme the other
Chance tonight
Gimme the other
Gimme the other world
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh

I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.

I said to me mother
"Let me have a talk to Dad,"
So he comes to the telephone,
He wasn't 'arf mad,
Said "She's got no sense,
Silly little cow,
And if he comes round here
There's gonna be a row."

I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.

If he comes round here, I've got my beer,
Let Mother sort it out in the sideboard here,
Got my beer, let Mother sort it out,
I don't care if he comes round here.

You'd think he was a tramp
With the stubble on his chin,
He looks like something
That the cat's dragged in,
Never got no money,
Smokes all my fags,
Got holes in his soles
And he's hanging in rags.

On top of that he said to tell you
Why I've got the hump,
She had a skinny little belly
Now it's sticking out the front,
There's nothing here to fit
And she's running out of clothes,
If he did he's taken liberties,
I'll punch him on the nose.

But I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.

If he comes round here, I've got my beer,
Let Mother sort it out in the sideboard here,
Got my beer, let Mother sort it out,
I don't care if he comes round here...

[Spoken] I wanna hear everybody now. Something in me mouth. Right, I'll tell you what we're going to do now. I saw this done at Butlin's once, didn't 'arf sound good. You gotta split the crowd down the middle, right? Our side, and his side. Here we go: one, two, three, four.

I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.

[Spoken] That ain't really loud enough, one, two, three, four. Come on!

I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.

If he comes round here, I've got my beer,
Let Mother sort it out in the sideboard here,
Got my beer, let Mother sort it out,
I don't care if he comes round here.

If he comes round here, I've got my beer,
Let Mother sort it out in the sideboard here,
Got my beer, let Mother sort it out,
I don't care if he comes round here.

I don't care, I don't care,
I don't care if he comes round here,
I've got my beer in the sideboard here,
Let Mother sort it out if he comes round here.

If he comes round here, I've got my beer,
Let Mother sort it out in the sideboard here,
Got my beer, let Mother sort it out,
I don't care if he comes round here.

never a truer word spoken

Yep, true. I say book, not buck, cos I'm from the yorkshire end of my home town, and people from the lancashire end of the same town used to take the piss out of me for it.

These lyrics are reminding me, I meant to ask if anyone knows the source of that "why do I have to be fat?" song sample on the...erm...erm...oh goddamnit, which album was that on again?

The North
http://www.witneyrfc.fsnet.co.uk/Images/misc/Yosser.jpg

x-post, fuck

As someone from north Lincolnshire,* I'd like to point out that this is OTM.

* but not from North Lincolnshire, if you want to be a pedant.

People from North Lincolnshire def consider themselves northern. Grimsby, Cleethorpes, etc. Lincoln itself and Boston etc are more East Midlands I think.

As someone from north Lincolnshire,* I'd like to point out that this is OTM.

My Grimbarian girlfriend says quite firmly on this subject that she's from the East.

not true! Edgware is about the London-est place there is!

IT'S ON THE NORTHERN LINE

But that's cos she's living in the west

My Grimbarian girlfriend says quite firmly on this subject that she's from the East.

Bah.

(Your Grimbarian girlfriend has been mentioned on ILX before. I am intrigued by the thought that we might have mutual aquaintances)

a) bacon. most bacon now (HELLO MORRISONS!) is too watery and low in fat to produce a decent amount of grease. butter with a bacon sandwich is gorgeous. as a southerner, i am entitled to use HOUMOUS in place of butter. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

b) london to me equals - inside m25. maybe not watford, but it wont be long.

c) southerners who move north? who are are traitors to? i think the direction of hate/disdain is mcuh stronger north > south than the other way. when i moved norht i met a manc who refused ever to go to london, on principle, and when we forced him was genuinely freaked out. on the other side, i can imagine friends from back home not being arsed to go north, being contemptuous of the idea, but not opposed on principle*. io think that best describes the relation ship:

north's view of south - approaching hate
south's view of north - disinterest, mockery, patronisation, fistful of preconceptions.

* although a friend who is a genuine cockney was transported to derbyshire and got the fear real bad recently.

An old boss of mine once suggested that Chicago was the Glasgow of America, which may be OTM.

Probably because of that weird Northants accent that seems to be a cross between Midlands and cockney e.g. "No" = "Nyyyaaaeeee". Anyway, you're (technically) south of the Watford gap, so therefore soft southern shandy-drinking twats. Meanwhile, 20 miles away, you have Coventry and Chav-ville, sorry Nuneaton, which are undoubtedly, er, not southern.

(I really must get over that Welsh ex-girlfriend)

When, during the 80s, the north/south thing was a suitable topic for comedy, I remember seeing Jasper Carrott doing something on a civil war between the north and south. It caught my imagination at the time, but mainly that the idea of independence from the south seemed as good and as likely a way of making sure that the South's tendency to vote Tory didn't lumber us all with them.

In my line of thinking, anything including and further north from Merseyside, Manchester and Yorkshire up is North. Anything south of Birmingham is looking southern (check the London connections map which goes to Birmingham). Staffordshire is Midlands, as is Derbyshire, though NE Derbyshire is really South Yorks, and West Derbyshire is really Manchester. Cheshire is an island of crap which is saved from being not referred to at all in this typography by virtue of having a nice cheese.

er, you mean washington dc vs new york?

As am I, now.

Let's qualify that statement by saying that Wales and Scotland voted overwhelmingly for the Labour Party and that the North voted for the Labour Party. By the way, the Conservative Party - after a short blip - is back to being the biggest electoral party in England, thanks again, guys!

As a naturalised Mancunian, I am enjoying this thread.

It's tough trying to link other cities in the US to UK. Because much of classic The Norf (Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Manchester) is strange in that it doesn't have a coast, even though the UK is a bloody island and should be all coast (you are never more than 73 miles from the see sayeth the Hott Historian). So you have to try and link it to coast-less cities in the Midwest that are on canals or rivers rather than the coast.

Ah, yes, thanks! In a sudden flash of inspiration, it's occurred to me that actually, it's probably from a song by gracie fields. And she's somebody I should know more about anyway. So I'll do some research.

xpost yeah manchester is like 4th??

As am I, now.

What schools did she go to?

Was she ever in either a) the Recorder Festival b) the Youth Orchestra?

Errrrrrr, excyowzzzzze moy, bit Robert Plant and John Bonham are from Bromsgrove

(she might know *of* St3f, because her dad was the editor of the local paper, hence her dancing exploits got in the local paper much more often than anyone else's)

haha is this a ref to the NCPM?!?!! ie pop museum...cos i would take the DEMF over NCPM any freakin day. but yeah its warp vs UR (not vs but you know what i mean). iconic techno pioneers etc. maybe human leageue/ cab voltaire = motwon?!?!! er wtf i dont knwo what im talking about

mind you, detorit isnt surrounded by tall mountains is it? i think you need that as well as its sort of intrinsic to sheffield. has pittsburgh got any hills?

I like my metaphor and I'm sticking to it.

http://www.geograph.co.uk/photos/00/78/007867_a55fa12f.jpg
(from noel jenkins at geograph.co.uk - http://www.geograph.co.uk/photo/7867)

liverpool

http://static.flickr.com/17/20555105_d866655258.jpg

(Even though Yale was based on Oxford and Harvard is in Cambridge, MA.)

No, it would be the twee bits of the Peaks, Castleton, Hathersage etc.

Liverpool has two universities and two cathedrals. (You saw both cathederals when you were there I think)

Baltimore.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1935000/images/_1939454_lily300.jpg

Liverpool.

(Is there anything like the MIT vs. Harvard FITE!!! in England? I mean, yeah, Harvard vs. Yale = Oxford vs. Cambridge, but what about science vs. humanities FITE!)

Ann Arbour isn't really twee, it's more a pretty college town with lots of white middle class folk who fled Detroit when those uppity negros started burning it. Did anyone ever burn Sheffield? Except those uppity Normans back in the 12th Century?

It'd be hard not to, they're on the same street :)

lots of my friends went to Franklin

Well if they're around the 26-28 mark and remember a tall slim girl with glasses called R0w3na, that's her.

except for new haven's dire urban poverty surrounding the university encampment.

well yes.

When did they de-merge? My dad did his PhD there (in Physics, so I assume it was the former bit) in the 60s, and I sure hope he didn't kill any humanities students!

Not directly, it was named after NEMS, which was Brian Epstein's music shop, NEMS standing for............

haha, really?
"alright, mate? snoochy boochies, nyanyanya!"

ok...

So Oxford, then.

Y'know, reading back this sounds awfully sarcastic, but it wasn't meant to be. I actually use the word gosh irl.

Sadly next month is a bit busy like :(

Bland question of the month:

Is there anything fun to do if you're stuck for an day and an evening in Worcester?

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g186424-Activities-Worcester_Worcestershire_England.html

Barry the Baptist: Fucking northern monkeys!
Lenny: I hate these fucking southern fairies!

Gritty realistic motifs.

Is there anything fun to do if you're stuck for an day and an evening in Worcester?

Go to the pub?

The Firefly in Lowesmoor sometimes has bands playing upstairs on Thurs/Fri nights.

Strange thread to revive for this, but yeah there are some quite nice pubs down New St or Lowesmoor or at least there were last time I was paying attention. Which is a few years now tbh.

I really love that Anna said the main difference is that southerners put butter on bacon sandwiches!

I'm pretty Southern, and I'd never do such a thing.
Lived up north for a bit and when I moved back down south the northern people warned me that: a kebab comes in a pita, not a naan; and you can't get meat & potato pies. First one was true, 2nd one, not sure about.

I don't mind the Midlands accent tbqh.

as a Midlander/Northerner by settlement I put butter on my bacon sandwiches.

Southerner here - I've never put butter on bacon sandwiches.

Most of the North/south stereotypes are bollocks, really.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs133.snc1/5694_1193450560643_1359790224_30535427_5721772_n.jpg

I really love that Anna said the main difference is that southerners put butter on bacon sandwiches!

― nakh get on my lvl (roxymuzak), Tuesday, January 4, 2011 8:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I put mayonnaise and lettuce in my bacon sarnies, how much of a Southern ponce am I.

I actually got the habit from my mum, whose mother was American.

if you go by "red riding" being northern means doing whatever you want, including but not limited to murder and pederasty

There's a bit in a Daniel Kitson show (who's definitely from the north) where he's making bacon sandwiches for his mates and wants to put avocado in but he's scared of looking poncy. Then all his mates are like "shame you didn't have any avocados, that would've been lovely"

Yeah, all of the Northerners of my generation I've ever known well have had broadly similar backgrounds and tastes to me. Definitely into avocado and rocket and balsamic.

serious q: is restaurant St. John "Northern"!?!?!?!?

it's to the immediate north of the city of london (financial district) iirc

Perhaps you Britishers can explain something to me. The English keep saying how grim it is up north, and that the further north you go it gets grimmer and grimmer and grimmer and suddenly Scotland, which nobody ever calls grim. Am I missing something? I can't qualify any of this first-hand as Camden high street is the northest I've been.

Scotland is a far away land about which we know little

There are some grim parts of Scotland, but different country so different rules.

I have an accent question. Southerners (maybe others I dunno) transcribe a Manc saying 'fuck' as 'fook'. Do they mean this to rhyme with 'Luke', in the way a Lancashire person says 'look at that' or 'cookery book', all rhyming with the name 'Luke'? If so, this is just seems wrong, everyone including Mancs rhymes 'fuck' with 'luck', right? I especially find this weird coming from Yorkshire, where we don't make any distinction btw 'look' and 'luck', and I can barely hear the difference in southern dialects.

Do they mean this to rhyme with 'Luke'?
No, with 'book'.

Listen up fat fuck as a real northerner I was brought up 2 say shit 2 people's faces not behind their back. Live forever LG

a quote, by Liam Gallagher

No, with 'book'.

Ah, OK then, I suppose southerners just have this special vowel in 'fuck' that northerners don't at all. A Yorkshire 'fuck' is just as much a 'fook' to a southerner as a Manc one then.

xxxxp ah so it's just perspective. Cheers.

A Yorkshire 'fuck' is just as much a 'fook' to a southerner as a Manc one then.
Indeed

Ah, OK then, I suppose southerners just have this special vowel in 'fuck' that northerners don't at all.

― Vasco da Gama, Wednesday, 5 January 2011 00:03 (8 minutes ago)

to the rest of us, that vowel's called an "a"

only cockneys / strong estuary say 'fack orf' though.

not really

serious q: is restaurant St. John "Northern"!?!?!?!?

― i love you but i have chosen snarkness (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 18:33 (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

No, but if you want Norther Food in a St John vein, check out Andrew Pern, Chef at the Star Inn in Helmsley.

I think (from my Yank perspective, though I do have a sister living in Leeds) that a lot of the regional divisions in the UK stem from the lack of traveling Brits do within their own country. I've met many folks from the south who have never been up north and never want to, and vice versa, even though nothing is far. For that matter, I've met people who lived a short drive from Scotland but never even considered going there (likewise Wales).

Where does Sheffield fall in all this? I always thought it had this uber-industrial reputation, but it seemed lovely to me. Apparently the greenest (as in foliage) city in England, no? And the Yorkshire/Derbyshire Dales are Mars-landing cool.

Where does Sheffield fall in all this? I always thought it had this uber-industrial reputation, but it seemed lovely to me.

Like most of the industrial cities there's not so much industry now, so it depends on how various industrial cities have changed or adapted

(I thought similar about Pittsburgh - to an extent)

I've met many folks from the south who have never been up north and never want to, and vice versa, even though nothing is far.

I've met a number of Northerners who've energetically slagged off London when they find out I'm from there, then later admit they've never actually visited. Lots of us lot are the same as well. But even someone relatively well travelled within the country such as myself hold base prejudices - I've been around a bit, and have concluded London is the best.

the upside down guinness hat is killing me fyi

think (from my Yank perspective, though I do have a sister living in Leeds) that a lot of the regional divisions in the UK stem from the lack of traveling Brits do within their own country.

I would have pegged this as more of a historical than contemporary thing, but it's p valid I think

I've met a number of Northerners who've energetically slagged off London when they find out I'm from there, then later admit they've never actually visited. Lots of us lot are the same as well.

difference is london is worthwhile

xpost Southerners transcribing Northern fucks as "fook" is the single most annoying habit in British journalism. Got it banned in the style book of the place I work, but it still creeps through.

NvS is all posturing. Even as they indulge in the stereotypes, people know they are rubbish. You only need to turn on the TV to see the north isn't all Dark Satanic Mills and the south isn't all mansions. You see the north v south posturing at its clearest in football chants.
From southern teams to northern teams:
"You dirty Northern bastards"
"We pay your benefits/ We pay your benefits"
"In your northern slums/ You look in the gutter for something to eat/ You find a dead rat and you think it's a treat/ In your nothern slums
To Liverpool (mocking their anthem You'll Never Walk Alone):
"Sign on/ Sign on/ With a pen in your hand/ And you'll never work again/ You'll never work again."

I think (from my Yank perspective, though I do have a sister living in Leeds) that a lot of the regional divisions in the UK stem from the lack of traveling Brits do within their own country

Obviously there are geographic/transport factors, but I think this is probably less true of Britain than, say, the US or Australia.

I think (from my Yank perspective, though I do have a sister living in Leeds) that a lot of the regional divisions in the UK stem from the lack of traveling Brits do within their own country. I've met many folks from the south who have never been up north and never want to, and vice versa, even though nothing is far. For that matter, I've met people who lived a short drive from Scotland but never even considered going there (likewise Wales).

yeah i've always noticed this, too, it's weird. esp compounded when we've had brits over here. my parents took their friends to the grand canyon via las vegas, and even though they're well-traveled, they were still sorta amazed at how far apart things were in the US. the same drive would take you from london to newcastle.

xp disagree, caek!

well sorta: yanks probably see less regionally distinct places in their own country than brits, maybe, but probably cover distances by car fairly routinely (at least a couple times a year) that would allow a brit to see their entire country. like, it's not uncommon at all for some ppl in the states to go to the country once or twice a month (visit fam, or w/e) and do like 3-4 hours of driving each way.

I do about 3 or 4 hours of driving each way to visit my family several times a year, and I don't even cover half of Scotland in doing so.

sure, but it's apples and oranges.

like if you say the uk north ~= the us south, i would imagine a bigger fraction of uk northerners travel outside the north every year than us southerners.

but my point is not uk vs. us, it's that the uk north vs south is not a product of an unusual level of ignorance of what life is like in the other half.

like, doing the drive between chicago and mpls is pretty commonplace for a lot of ppl in the midwest, just because chicago is the big city that drains the whole region, so ppl go home to mn/wi, and its usually cheaper to drive than it is to fly (doubly so if you're from a small town). that one drive gets you from london to glasgow, and i'd wager v few ppl in the UK ever do that

xp ailsa i guess i'm thinking of englanders, not scots. yr country is big and empty, like ours. and yeah, it is apples and oranges, i suppose. the regional variation in england is more pronounced over smaller distances than it is here.

i cannot think of a single northerner i know who has not been to the south. (tbf same is perhaps not true of southerners who have not been to the north). but point is that, by many countries standards, because media is more national and distances are shorter, there is an awful lot of internal economic and cultural transfer.

which is not to say that it's a homogenous country

then again: i've always imagined (maybe falsely) that in the US south, the differences between states are more pronounced and fiercely guarded than they are in the upper midwest. i sorta think that, say, Yoopers are basically just Minnesotans, while i've always assumed that someone from alabama does not at all think they have a lot in common with someone from north carolina or georgia or mississippi or wherever. eg they all sound southern to me, but a friend of mine from NC can identify regional variations in accent pretty specifically, whereas i can only pick out Texan, Kentuckian (sometimes), and ~maybe~ Georgian. otherwise they all sound like hicks imo

xp yeah that makes sense

xp ailsa i guess i'm thinking of englanders, not scots. yr country is big and empty, like ours.

?? England is a lot bigger than Scotland!

and full of people

anyway both of yr countries are fucking tiny, i was just trying to build bridges

re: "being Northern", the kind of people who describe themselves as "Northern" live in a band across central England, e.g. places like http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=111133799750073774887.00047b1d86b28c1220efb

i don't know if geordies describe themselves as Northerners. would sound weird to me.

Surely a country being full of people makes it more difficult to drive around because of all the traffic congestion. I dunno, I don't get yr point I guess.

Like it takes about 4 hours for my mum to drive down to London from the SW Midlands.

re: "being Northern", the kind of people who describe themselves as "Northern" live in a band across central England, e.g. places like http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=111133799750073774887.00047b1d86b28c1220efb

― caek, Wednesday, January 5, 2011 11:21 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

huh. weird! i always thought it was everything between that band and the scottish border

Aye, but you've got better roads outside of the major conurbations. Travelling around Scotland is rewarding, but hard work compared to scooting around (or standing still in traffic jams, I guess!) on yr fancy English motorways.

xposts. aye, I tend to think of Northern as Manchester & surrounding, also Yorkshire. Further north than that is a whole other kettle of fish.

xp i think that's how southerners think of it, i.e. not the south.

but The North is a smaller region imo.

The North looks like this

http://www.johnbulmer.co.uk/collections/north-uk/large/1.JPG

Ben used to have an old atlas with a map of the tri-state area, to scale, pencil-traced over the map of GB. Very revealing, and I think of it with fondness because he was so dedicated to investigating the tiny little differences vs similarities and taking the time to do something like that just...because.

Anyway, I think I'm picking up what gbx is putting down? When a place is full of people and cities, many little spots are perceived as "destinations", and you don't have to go far to pass one or more "major" cities or destination spots. Whereas when you're driving through mostly empty countryside, you discount an hour here or there (or two, or three!) because there isn't anywhere ELSE in between, the longer distances are simply necessary to get anywhere.

Dunno how seriously I can take the idea that Geordie's aren't northerners. I get that there's a more specialised red rose/white rose concept of The North - but they're not that different, and the accent blurs with Yorkshire in Middlesbrough

look at those fucking hipsters

xp

Yeah was going to say, that's obviously Kingsland Road.

me neither xxp, but i'm not sure geordies would agree.

geordies are definitely northerners i think - its just that "northern" is so often used to mean lancashire/yorkshire specifically

I don't think of Scousers as Northern, they have their own special category. Mancs on the other hand are definitely Northern.

northens do plops on internet website and souths do plops on there toilets

― plops

Speaking as an actual genuine Geordie (Born in Jarrow), w/r/2 "Northener", I don't...care? It's not something I've given a second's thought in my life.

^^^ exactly. not northerner.

The real divide in England isn't North/South anyway, it's London and its environs/rest of England. Wales or the South-West peninsula is just as remote/other culturally/politically in england as Cumbria or Yorkshire as far as I can see. IDK what other countries in the world have this weird divide where the capital has ALL the cultural/political/media power, it seems weird to me, and I've always thought it was a bad thing for our country.

West Country folk are kind of neutral in the North/South war, I've always thought. They may have anti-London leanings, but they're not serious combatants. The Welsh are like some crazy rogue splinter cell neither side particularly wants to be associated with.

love the welsh tbh

Small, dark, and wyverns.

I recently discovered I'm 1/8th Welsh actually.

Controversial correlation of the UK north with the US south: the gollywog. Or do you find gollywogs all over the UK?

Are there still gollywogs in the North?

no

No. I cannot remember the last time I saw one of those.

I've seen gollywogs recently in Minehead (nominally South, but not really wrt this argument) and York (North, obv. in Yorkshire, but somehow doesn't really seen Northern)

IDK what other countries in the world have this weird divide where the capital has ALL the cultural/political/media power

wouldn't this be the norm? admittedly the norm means countries either the size/smaller than the UK, or without its uh "global status"...though it's a pretty interesting thing to think about

re: travel across countries - yeah i'm sure many british people have stories about US friends/relatives coming over and suggesting, like, day trips to scotland or wherever, because their conception of distance and ease of travel is so different.

i think of golliwogs as a south-west england thing - i'd guess that if i went home (somerset) and actually looked around i wouldn't have to look too hard for them.

I have a gollywog keyring from the 70's, my mum used to work for robinsons jam which was just down the road.
it's now flattened ready for new houses :(

wouldn't this be the norm?

I actually have no idea! I'm genuinely curious to know.

Robertsons, not robinsons.

i can't imagine the london/rest of UK (or even just england) imbalance being any greater than, say, that in...idk, sweden, finland, greece, austria. i could be wrong.

its just that "northern" is so often used to mean lancashire/yorkshire specifically

and in my case people from Potters Bar

it's only in the past year that i've actually been to the north (as opposed to travelling through it) - york, manchester, birmingham, liverpool

there's fucking golliwogs in shops in every seaside town up the East/North Yorkshire coast I've been to in the last 18 months, which is most of them. but I seem to remember seeing them in Devon seaside resorts recently too. think it's got more to do with seaside towns being full of reprehensible hicks.

The only seaside town I've been to in recent years is Whitby and i didn't see any there, although this doesn't prove anything as there might not have been room, what with all the tacky goth paraphenalia everywhere.

London is the biggest city in the UK by a huge margin (7 mil to Birmingham's 1 mil), dunno how usual that kind of discrepancy is.

xposts

lol yeah Whitby shops have a whole 'nother thing going on.

Whitby is a little posher and has a bit wider catchment area than yr Withernseas or Bridlingtons too.

why IS whitby goth mecca, anyway? i never worked that one out.

It's where Dracula landed in England in the book 'Dracula'.

It's where Dracula's ship came ashore in Bram Stoker's novel (IIRC it's a fictionalised, though recognisable take on the place, I haven't read "Dracula" in like 20 years)

really?! i'm not sure whether i'm being really gullible here or not. christ.

xp i guess two answers have to be believed then!

Yeah, totally Dracula. google it if you don't believe people!

yeah I think it's transparently fictionalised. so they started having a bit of a goth festival in the summer I think and then the businesses spring up around this, self-feeding phenomena

I think "being northern" has something to do with pit ponies and being southern has something to do with shandy, but I haven't updated my Britishisms database since I read The Road to Wigan Pier.

It probably helps that the place looks more than somewhat gothic, what with the huge ruined cathedral on the cliff overlooking the town.

I thought Whitby was pretty cool when I went there as a kid.

can I be a pedantic twat and say it's an Abbey? Synod of Whitby (or whatever it was called) was a biggish moment in the orthodoxifying of Christianity in the UK. Got some nice pics on the other puter, it's v. beautiful up there.

Of course you can (you pedantic twat) yes it's an abbey, you're right. I like Whitby loads, it's a nice place to spend a couple of days.

Can also report gollywogs on Bury market

I have a gollywog keyring from the 70's, my mum used to work for robinsons jam which was just down the road.
it's now flattened ready for new houses :(

That must be a bloody big keyring.

I am the only southerner in my office (in the south; not London) and every day I have to listen to a series of hilarious jokes about how every stupid decision management have ever made is because they are southerners (half of them aren't even British) and therefore wasteful, rude, daft, etc

and listen to a guy who spent several years travelling round east Asia, didn't get a job until nearly 25, had a brand new car and bought a flat down south before starting said job, talking about how rich, posh, spoilt southerners are

sometimes I point out that my family are from near Plymouth which is further from London than Leeds is anyway, but mostly I just silently curse my lack of amusing, non-bitter retorts

(I didn't know what a "lawn jockey" was until I read one of ILX's many fine race threads, and then two months later I saw one on a garden subsiding down a cliff near Weymouth)

Grimsby sounds nice

hahahahahahahahaha

lololololo.olo

xp!

Leeds is the South of the North btw, psychologically speaking

dublin, obv, is the south of ireland. The west/northwest is the north, the southwest is wales and the north is another country

all this in a country the size of rhode island

we got issues, what can i say

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01578/likelylads_1578242c.jpg