Taking Sides: NORTH OF ENGLAND VS SOUTH OF ENGLAND

Debatable, highly debatable in fact. I doubt I'll ever go back to Dorset, shame really, but there you go.

(= major bid for joke of the month btw)

Poole although this may be the reason Jonnie is talking about "The harbour is now the worlds biggest natural one following those Aussies building all over theirs. "

Sydney

Tim will be pleased to hear that Falmouth claims the world's third largest!!!!

and Halifax, Nova Scotia claims to be the second largest in area but the largest in terms of water volume.

more to follow undoubtedly.

dunno - I have been there though and it is nice. But probably not as nice as Arne ;)

http://www.infomagic.net/~martince/wlbanana.htm

Chris, don't summon Candyman Pinefox. These days, he's all about disparaging me.

No = no one, it's too much effort to bother writing out complete sentences when it comes to N.

there's a case to be made for the moral superiority of the north in terms of how much more plausible their lumpen mra/roid psycho was compared to this cargo cult imbecile

Inside-mind-Wolverine-Videos-reveal-bizarre-ramblings-21-year-old-triple-murder-suspect-struggled-cope-mother-s-alcoholism-parents-separation-job-hated.html

great dn

this lad needed a nice youth club but there all closed now

I've come to the conclusion and, the fact that this thread exists helps confirm it, that the Midlands is a bit of a mystery to me. For a start, I don't know where anything is. I had no idea Leicester was so far south and Stafford was so far north and what is Northampton? The accents are confusing, Leicester is slightly northern, Northampton sounds "Midlands". I don't know what's in the Midlands and what isn't either. Derby is the Midlands, right? Is Shrewsbury? Peterborough? Crewe? Worcester is but Cambridge isn't?

Derby is classic Midlands, Shrewsbury I never feel is nor Worcester, and i feel v borderline about Crewe - perhaps because it feels it’s one of those places that’s in no sort of zone at all. imv The Midlands is that cluster of industrial towns - Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Stoke, Leicester, Staffs.

Peterborough’s that Lincolnshire and fenland country for me.

Yeah Northampton feels the southmost tip of the Midlands to me.

to me for me jesus.

too many questions to spitball all of them at once. my first proposition would be that anywhere Staffordshire as now constituted and Derbyshire are at least partly more a kind of pre-North than tru Midlands. kind of. Shropshire & southern Cheshire too, but then they've both got a Welsh marches thing going on as well

Notts & Leicestershire also not quite tru Midlands either, or East Midlands as a discrete entity at least

i mean this is a big parcel of vibes that i don't want to spout certainties on but can't help playing with anyway

welsh marches and The Ambiguity of Cheshire < yes. i’m firm on Derby and Notts tho.

otm about vibes obv. my entirely correct but continuously shifting vibes based analysis.

Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire definitely seem northern because of the accents.

accents is part of it yeah, i guess underlying stuff about the industrial base and the geography, the gravity around Birmingham, idk need to think more on the vibes. obv "the Midlands" shouldn't be reduced to a monoculture any more than "the North" or "the South"

the Peaks is its own gravitational centre maybe

Worcester is but Cambridge isn't?

I'm from Worcester, which is definitely in the Midlands. I live in Cambridge, which is somewhere between East Anglia (which is sort of another thing?) and Estuary English-land, neither of which is the Midlands, but the top bit of Cambridgeshire where it turns into Peterborough is definitely East Midlands.
I'm also from Herefordshire, which has Midlands TV but feels sort of like its own thing, not quite Wales, not quite West Country. And my mum now lives in Stratford (Upon Avon), which is in Warwickshire (so Midlands?) but feels more like The South to me.
In conclusion The Midlands is a land of contrasts

Worcester is on this finger of Midlandsness which stretches down along the M5, from Bromsgrove and Droitwich, but then you've got The Malvern Hills which do not feel Midlandsy

Weird that Lincolnshire, or parts of it, are classed as East Midlands. It seems something different both geographically and culturally.

Lincolnshire is this corner of England that I haven't been to and know nothing about but it's neither out of the way nor small. Nottingham I get, Hull too. In between, a complete blank. What's there?

shrewsbury (shropshire) is of course the *west* midlands

here is a good youtube that explains everything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muGjr7vnElY

WATCH ON YOUTUBE FOR EVERYTHING TO BE EXPLAINED (i am not the video owner)

my first proposition would be that anywhere Staffordshire as now constituted and Derbyshire are at least partly more a kind of pre-North than tru Midlands

Notts & Leicestershire also not quite tru Midlands either

Noooo, what is this? All of these places are proper Midlands! Staffs is more West Midlands, Derby & Notts & Leicester all East Midlands, and there is a bit of a different 'style' of Midlandsiness between West and East, though if you ask me to clarify I'd be hard pushed to answer.

I will give you that Stoke feels 'pre-North' to me. Peterborough and Northampton just squeak into being technically Midlands but they feel 'pre-South'.

Lincolnshire is this corner of England that I haven't been to and know nothing about but it's neither out of the way nor small. Nottingham I get, Hull too. In between, a complete blank. What's there?

Lincolnshire is weirdly big. I think of it as Lincoln cathedral and the good university a bunch of friends work at, but it's also Skegness and Grimsby and where Thatcher was born.

(xp) Peterborough's north of Birmingham!

Yeah, and in the same way, Stoke's only just more notherly than Nottingham in actual location, it just feels different! It might be because Peterborough's actually in Cambridgeshire, which is totally a southerner's county.

Notherly? Northerly, you know what I mean.

Notherly is probably in the Midlands though.

Okay, hang on, need to check if this opinion is controversial... East Anglia is part of The South. Is that just me or is that a commonly accepted feeling?

East Anglia and the West Midlands are their own (single and unified) region

a lot of the issue here is that england's second city (the birmingham-wolverhampton agglomerate) functions as a vast undervalued cultural black hole for reasons that ozzy osbourne and kevin rowland have spent a lifetime explaining to northern AND southern melts (who comprehend this not)