Thursday, Mar 04, 2010
A whiff of nimbyism?
Reuters: "North Londonshire" plan sparks Middle England ire
Campaigners have attacked a 1.3 million pound scheme to rebrand part of Northamptonshire as 'North Londonshire', saying the plan risked turning the area into a commuter belt.
Posted by mr g @ 01:53 PM (919 views) Add Comment
14 Comments
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1. cynicalsoothsayer said...
It is south of the Watford Gap. And it already is commuter belt for 'Town'.
2. drewster said...
Yes, a whiff of nimbyism. However they clearly say it's an attempt to attract businesses to the area - not people.
What's wrong with commuter towns anyway? People have to live somewhere.
3. mark wadsworth said...
Wanting to keep your proper name is not NIMBYist, but looking down on "commuter towns" certainly is. There's nothing wrong with commuter towns. All towns are commuter towns, more or less, as very few people work from home. I don't work from home, ergo I am a commuter. Ergo where I live is a commuter suburb.
And secondly Northamptonshire is considerably north of Watford.
4. 51ck-6-51x said...
MW - It's (just) North of Watford Gap (the traditional N/S divide point), not Watford :)
5. 51ck-6-51x said...
** oops (just) South...
6. vacuouspolitician said...
This has been on the cards for a while. The railway has been earmarked for an upgrade.
7. 51ck-6-51x said...
As the article implies all* they need to do is build a small airport and give some slots to RyanAir and hey presto they have a London airport.
* I know there's probably uite a bit of work to do there, but it's only in jest ...or is it?!
8. mr g said...
@4 "It's (just) North of Watford Gap (the traditional N/S divide point), not Watford :)"
Although I disagree with both writers, according to Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier and Stuart Maconie in Pies & Prejudice, the North starts around Stoke on Trent or Cheshire respectively not Watford Gap.
9. dbc reed said...
As a Northampton resident (please show your sympathy in tangible monetary reform) , I thought this proposal was not serious and so, reading the article, it proves.Watford is a village north of Northampton off the A5 and is in a gap in the very low hills where motorway,railway and canal converge to take advantage of a relatively gentle gradient.Football fans bound for Watford FC have been known to stop off and terrorise the villagers by searching for Vicarage Road .The best guide to local geography and regional boundaries is in Northamptonian Ray Gosling's" Sum Total" an autobiography he wrote in his very early twenties.Can't remember where he said the psycho-geographical divides were.
An upgrade to the railway line is news to me.People do commute but they must be very hardy souls as you can get to London easily but they are not really interested in getting you back. For some reason all trains compulsorily stop at Milton Keynes though there is another station six minutes along the line.
10. Sensiblebear said...
No mention of why so many people (like me) commute miles into London. High house prices. I'd probably move to Northants for a decent house even if I then spend my life on a train. A colleague of mine commutes to London every day from Birmingham!
11. Emily said...
LOL
The fact that southerners often confuse watford and watford gap just confirms the theory that they think of the northern areas of england as some kind of vague here be dragons territory.
12. cynicalsoothsayer said...
I often hear people from north of Watford Gap calling themselves northerners, but they're really all soft southerners to us Scots.
13. mark wadsworth said...
@ Emily, hang about here. I'm from Bradford, West Yorkshire, how the heck was I supposed to know the difference?
All I know about down South is that there are relatively few dragons (I've not seen one in seventeen years), that much is true.
14. mr g said...
Mr Wadsworth!
I'm delighted to hear that, like myself, you're from God's Own Country, I should have realised sooner reading you're posts which by and large are common sense!