Environment | The Guardianby Editorial on (#12T8Q)
From museums to civil service jobs, the attitudes that could doom the powerhouse idea are on display. To signal real change, London must now get behind proper flood defences for the northNortherners like to think of themselves as down-to-earth sorts. Few go in for the invective of the Bradford balladeer, Justin Sullivan, who denounced a “land of gold and poison†200 miles to the south. But events are conspiring to encourage such judgments. After the Conservative win last year, a northern powercut first paused and then slowed to a crawl the electrification of transpennine rail. Severe Christmas flooding left drenched northern communities feeling that a distant government was slower to act than it might have been if the waters had been rising in Barnes. And this week comes news that the 400,000-object collection of the Royal Photography Society is to be pulled out of the National Media Museum in Bradford, and shunted down to the V&A in London.The sense of a regional divide is heightening even as a powerful chancellor ramps up his “northern powerhouse†talk, an irony underlined last week when the lead department in the powerhouse project announced it was closing its biggest office outside of London, with the loss of hundreds of Sheffield jobs. It is tempting to dismiss George Osborne’s whole scheme as empty rhetoric – tempting, but too hasty. For considerable real powers will soon pass into the hands of the new metro mayors. The chancellor has forged impressive cross-party alliances with experienced local politicians in Manchester and Sheffield who would not rush to sign deals that gave them responsibility for nothing but cuts. These local leaders grasp the progressive potential in taking charge of business, transport and skills, and they grasp, too, that it is no good decrying an overmighty capital while also expecting that same capital to fix every last regional problem. Continue reading...
