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chris_j

Why "ran" in the past tense? The plant is still running.

And why the reference to Geordies - natives of Newcastle - when the plant is in Sunderland?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_U...

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And why the reference to Geordies - natives of Newcastle - when the plant is in Sunderland?

Google maps tells me those two places are only 14.3 miles away. So 1) that's pretty understandable to conflate and 2) a lot of people from Newcastle probably commute there.

The reason I noticed it is that the two cities, though very close geographically, have an intense and not entirely friendly rivalry that goes back hundreds of years and continues to this day. See for example the History section of [0]. Although it's understandable that someone not familiar with the area could confuse the two places, friends from Sunderland tell that they are pretty offended when they are mistaken for Geordies. I imagine it's like accusing Bart Simpson and his friends of being from Shelbyville.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyne%E2%80%93Wear_derby

EDIT: Please forgive me for bringing this up. I appreciate it's not particularly relevant to moomin's comment about the culture of the Nissan plant, which I agree with aside from my nitpicks, nor to the original video.

I appreciated the comment. This kind of tangential but interesting tidbit is one of the more attractive aspects of HN to me.

Eh, close places often have intense rivalries over minor difference (that feel big to them), but to the outsider they look pretty much the same.

Have a look at Greek and Turkey for example. Even their cuisine is nearly identical.

Or look at the adherents of the major parties in many countries around the world.

To avoid an American example: if you put a member of the British Tories or Labour into Japan, they will pretty much be seen as just some Brits.

I recently learned that there’s a name for this phenomenon, “ schismogenesis”. It seems immediate neighbors adopt opposite stance just to be different.

I don’t know that it’s universal. At least some people I know from Sunderland call themselves Geordies.

Having seen your edit: just wanted to chime in and thank you for the comment - I learned something I never would have otherwise.

> Google maps tells me those two places are only 14.3 miles away.

Are you American? That's a long way in terms of cultural differences in the UK.

Are you American?

Why would you assume that?

That's a long way in terms of cultural differences in the UK.

Sure, but it's pretty insignificant to someone not in or familiar with the UK. Which is the vast majority of planet earth.

> Why would you assume that?

I didn't assume it - I asked.

> Sure, but it's pretty insignificant to someone not in or familiar with the UK. Which is the vast majority of planet earth.

Yeah... which is why I explained it to you, since it's unfamiliar to so many people.

Did you not want it explained to you?

Most of planet earth used to be under UK rule

14 miles in British is something like 200 miles in American.

In Britain, 100 miles is a long distance. In the US, 100 years is a long time.

Especially in the Western US. In Los Angeles, all travel is measured in time rather than distance.

My experience with the British is they frequently have stark rival differences in cultural identity based on which part of which city they live.

Not exclusively a British idiosyncrasy, given gangs and tribal habits elsewhere, but you're quite right that we Brits do take to various ways of distinguishing ourselves on sometimes questionable grounds! Location, education level, schools, universities, colleges within universities, accents, vocabulary, class, sports affiliations, it's endless!

Not nearly to the same extent as the UK, but in the US, people judge you based on regional accent and vocabulary as well. An English teacher at my high school threw out the curriculum she should have been teaching, and just had us practice vocabulary and (remedial) grammar. She said that we will be consigned to the ghetto as long as we sound like that is where we belong.

They will feel stark to the locals only.

In Britain, people from both places will leave their shoes on indoors at home, praise the NHS, watch football and think the queen is fine.

> In Britain, people from both places will leave their shoes on indoors at home

This is by no means a universal thing here!

I was stereotyping a bit for the sake of brevity.

And yes, even the queen is not universally accepted. Famously, the Labour party used to be republican, but seems to have mostly given up on that plank of policy.

In any case, my main point was that intense local rivalries exist, but actual differences between neighbouring places are typically fairly minor.

I'm Italian and we have a similar situation, things like e.g. heated rivalry between two towns that are 15 km apart.

This can go very deep because as you know (but may be surprising to our American friends) in Europe we have much less cultural uniformity.

For example, in the two towns in Central Italy that I'm thinking about, which are only 15 km apart, people speak completely different dialects that are only partially intelligible one another.

A fun fact is that now I live in Australia which is one of the countries in the world with the least variance in accent. You can't tell Sydney and Perth accents apart, even though the two cities are thousands of kms apart.

same goes for many other places in europe aswell. (netherlands, germany, france etc).

just look at football rivalries to get the idea.

Sorry, yes, it’s still running. There’s long term strategic questions over it, but those are nothing to do with the actual work product.

And I’m loving the extremely detailed Tyneside vs Sunderland debate you managed to kick off.

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