Notes from England

Brief notes from three weeks in England. More will follow on one of them.

North and South: The biggest and most entertaining flap during the three weeks I was there came when Policy Exchange, a favorite think-tank of Conservative Party leader David Cameron, published a study declaring that nearly all major cities in the North of England were failures and that the best idea for residents of the North was to move south to London, Oxford, Cambridge, and the like.

There followed a great deal of scurrying by Cameron to disavow the report; a great deal of outrage from residents of Liverpool, Leeds, and other northern cities; and special features in the national press on the many virtues of the North.

To an outsider, even one who visits England regularly, this all seems baffling. The North of England includes the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, two national treasures. One of its "failed" cities, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was the European Capital of Culture (ECC) some years ago, and the current ECC is Liverpool, named in the report as a city beyond redemption. How is this failure? And why would anyone want to leave these places and move to crowded, expensive London?

I guess an outsider can't see the problem. To this outsider, the very northern city of Leeds looks like a dynamic place whose spirits are in good order and whose pedestrian precincts are beautiful and very well-used. Liverpool is the place where the Beatles originated. Newcastle, although a work in progress, is worth visiting anytime and must be an exciting place to live.

More on Leeds in the future. It is a city worth a closer look. In the meantime, I think it is fair to say that no great north-south migration is anticipated in England.

A Tale of Two Countries: Shortly after we arrived in York, the national press featured, as its top headline, a prediction on climate change. I have tried to think of the last time this happened in the United States, apart from the specialist press, and came up with nothing. The equivalent headlines in the United States are about gas prices.

This says a lot about both countries, but less than one would hope about England. The United Kingdom is still behind most European Union countries on environmental issues—it is even behind the City of Philadelphia on recycling—and the Labour Government has approved construction of the first new coal-fired electricity plant in a generation. The environment makes headlines, but all may be less well than it seems.

But, and it bears repeating, at least the environment makes headlines in the UK. It would be nice if it did in the U.S. as well.