Why Northern England is poor
tomforth.co.uk
tomforth.co.uk
Manchester has a GDP per capita of £59,000. Tameside, the poorest area in Greater Manchester, has a GDP per capita of £19,000. Leeds has a GDP per capita of £42k; ten miles away, Bradford has a GDP per capita of £23.6k.
Those disparities are really difficult to explain in terms of infrastructure or commercial investment. Similar disparities exist within London, although for plausibly different reasons; compare Lewisham with the neighbouring Southwark, Camden with Haringey, or that one bit of Tower Hamlets with the rest of Tower Hamlets.
I think we need to be looking much more granularly at the gaps between neighbouring areas, schools and families - the human capital factors that trap people in lives of poverty. Building a university or innovation hub in Knowsley probably won't do much for the huge numbers of kids there who leave school unable to read and write.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulle...
If you look back even say 30 years ago in London, you'd of said the same thing about places like Hackney, as you do now about Tameside. Today it houses some of the most desired and valuable real estate not only in London, and by extension the UK, but in the world.
So, I don’t think we care about land here but rather people.
Not sure about that.
Also a lot of non-market housing being rented, all those people also benefit.
Poor areas have few people with the knowledge/ resources to really leverage gentrification which is why they are living in poorer neighborhoods to begin with. So the average outcome may be a slight improvement due to the major winners, but the median outcome is likely a net loss.
are you saying that gentrification of Hackney did not simply entail wealthier people moving in and displacing the local population, but rather soaring incomes for the people who lived there?
Educational outcomes need to be improved yesterday, no disagreement on that.
There's some displacement, yes. However anyone who isn't in privately rented accommodation would be choosing to leave, perhaps even with some decent money from selling their house.
Many people stay, if you'd like proof, take a walk down to hackney.
(This is in addition to the high productivity that's driving the gentrification in the first place, which will often result in increased opportunity in that very sector - but that's not always very relevant, especially in the short term.)
The poor people in Amsterdam get benefits paid for by the rich.
But gentrification, is not the same as a community leveling up. The former provides an influx of new residents with money to spend in the community. The latter creates new opportunities for the existing residents within the community.
I live down the road from OP in Harrogate and it's an incredibly desirable and affluent place
Also while I'm commenting. I know OP isn't saying the North is shit. Just poor(ish).
Nevertheless I just want to say I love the north of England and genuinely think it's one of the best places in the world. We've already established that I'm in one of the better areas so my perspective might be a little skewed, but I honestly think it's an incredible place and I hope this doesn't put people off visiting.
Rose: If you ARE an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North?
The Doctor: Lots of planets have a North!
Despite this tho I'd much rather live in Harrogate and enjoy the countryside than London tbh, plus people are less miserable there...
Did they fix the smell issues?
For my precise work on the hyper-local angle you're asking after I did this analysis of Greater Manchester when I lived there in 2018 and it holds up really well. https://www.tomforth.co.uk/inequalityingreatermanchester/
Specifically on the GDP per capita numbers you quote, it's important to know what the "capita" means here. In your numbers, the capita is of residents. So people who commute into Manchester to work are counted in the GDP side of the equation and not in the capita side of the equation giving a largely meaningless number when comparing the strength of an economy. In the case of Leeds and Bradford that you mention it's largely the same effect. When someone commutes from Ilkley or Harrogate to Leeds to work their GDP is counted in Leeds but their capita is counted in Bradford or North Yorkshire.
While I agree that looking at smaller geographies is useful, and indeed I do in the link top, we need to consider that overall Greater Manchester, and all of the North's other cities, just have very little prosperity to go around. There are pockets of wealth, but they are pockets against a backdrop of poverty. And of course in London there are pockets of poverty, but they are pockets against a backdrop of wealth. You can convince yourself of this by looking at the ONS small area income estimate dataset and map.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
And admitting to the error puts you right at the top of the list of non-idiots in my opinion!
It's a 15 minute train ride to Manchester. 30-40 min drive/bus trip to Manchester, 1 hour train ride to Leeds and slightly longer drive.
Generally Tameside is well serviced, you got all the amenities you would expect and location wise you have very good access for commuting. Manchester, Salford, Leeds university all easily accessible. Tamesides location makes it popular as a commuter location looking for lower costs of living.
It's always been a working class place. Despite the wealth of the industrial revolution, the grand factories mostly now demolished and buildings, the majority of people where/are working class low paid workers and didn't see that money although the money built grand markets and highstreets for workers to spend the wages.
Tameside is a low socioeconomic area which is generational.
I went to an at best, average school. The importance of school wasn't really seen, or taught at home or in school. Myself, I had a mixed schooling history. Troublesome/difficult, likely influenced through parents attitudes, being bullied at times, not academically smart but not dumb, dyslexic and can remember one specific teacher publicly shaming me for not being able to spell my surname instead of trying to teach me. My social worker partner is adamant i'm on the spectrum. I feel there was a nurturing missing generally at these average, low social economic schools and my time could of been better with the right support in school. Eck I got a C GCSE in maths but learnt a bit of category theory, Haskell and functional programming myself.
Those who had a reasonable fortunate home life seem to of done just ok in their adult life from the area.
Those who were disruptive, high level of truancy, poor parenting, some are dead, some are in prison, some look like they should be dead with addiction. Their kids will likely follow down the same path they did and they've had more kids than the people who turned out alright.
Growing up in low social economic environments is hard to break out of. It starts at home with the importance of education and it's hard to start at home when your parents and parents parents never seen the importance and then the schooling isn't prepared to deal with it.
I broke out of it leaving as fast as I could, hard work when younger and some luck.
The north can be raw, probably not so much these days but "southern pansy" or "posh", "gay" is used disparagingly for people trying to better themself. I grew up not in poverty and not well off, in a area that wasn't the worst but not great. My mum see's anyone who has done well for themselfs as "posh" looking down on her and that can be a common theme with the less fortunate people I know in the area. This is a generational attitude.
The story seems common over the world. People growing up less well off struggle to get out of being less well off and it often starts at home and education and it's hard to start at home in the environment you are in and education doesn't happen due to home environment apart from the few outliers who do overcome the odds stacked against them.
It's funny reading these articles from people who haven't grew up poor, in the north, never seen a council estate, or the way of life, talking about Universities in 1066 and Northern Conquests as a reason.
I grew up on a council estate and escaped that environment. I credit a headteacher that directed me to one of the better secondary schools, and a well run public library that was a safe third space between home and school. Curious what other escapees credit, and what lessons might be drawn.
I'm not in the UK anymore and been watching a UK YouTuber going around old towns https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingturnip/videos, some themes are not to different from a US YouTuber I watch going around US towns https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello/videos
Off topic, but I just wanted to say that Joy Division is one of my fave bands of all time.
Same elsewhere in (some parts of) Europe. Paris for example, though perhaps for different reasons.
It would appear that just having access to good education (or worse, merely being close to places with good education) doesn't mean you can consume it and advance in life. Probably ditto for other levelling up tools like apprenticeships, jobs etc.
More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking, as there was no relevant industry to pick them up... and as someone with several postdoctoral degrees, yet no house or meaningful assets... who could blame them for going into banking in this large miserable sprawl of a city utterly devoted to it?
I think the big problem is too much reliance on on service sector.
The brutal hard work gets done off-shore for poor pay and the spoils(profits) get shipped to the western finance capitals of the world where people who put in little effort get the cream.
It's still dependent on rich countries having historical leverage (economic, political and especially military) over the poor countries where the dirty manufacturing and hard labor happens, rather than based on any meritocracy.
Like any race to the bottom, it works great until you hit the bottom. Only now you don't have any of the fundamental industry, and you've lost all of the domain knowledge of those industries. Short-term thinking is incredibly seductive.
What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers...
Its other big goods exports are things that are not that visible to consumers.
There are definitely people here who think like that, and we do still import cheap labour for some things (difficult low paying jobs), that British people “will not do” ( which means ”will not do for minimum wage”) but in general we have had what the govt and central bank call “wage inflation”.
We are also talking about the north of England and non-EU immigrants strongly prefer certain areas, tilted to the South. Where I live I see few non-white faces.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpay...
It will still keep most population away from industrial production. Same thing happened is agriculture a century ago, when machines made 90% of agricultural workers redundant, and huge farms are run by half-dozen people.
(Wait until AI will make a ton of service workers redundant.)
And the focusing on a more abstract economy- produces a inability to even perceive physical products, limitations and overall reality and the world. If everything is an abstraction, then problems like climate change, running out of energy or societal instability, surely can be doctored, narrated and abstracted away. And they cant. Which is a fundamental incompetence that is pretty obvious by now.
One stuck in such a delusion, would imagine it optimal to blast furnace a mountain of money towards "elegant" formulas, unable to perceive, that those formulas at the end of the day have to produce fertilizer to feed a world of billions even when the crops fail.
How does one get hired into banking with a physics degree? For what kinds of jobs? Where I live right now you only get into banking with a economics/business degree. Anything else and your resume goes in the bin.
I've also hired a boatload of people with STEM degrees. In fact (massive generalisation warning) I prefer hiring them to those with computer science degrees.
But mostly, in a resume, I'm looking for 1) evidence of competence (do you know what software is and how to make it), 2) evidence of interest in the domain and 3) evidence of being able to communicate with others.
Everything else specialist can be taught / learned. You don't need to know either how to balance a tree, or how to calculate the value of an IR swap.
My experience: even when it comes to only implementing financial products, banks prefer mathematicians/physicists as software developers.
This does not seem to be a specific phenomenon. Only a few of my former PhD condensed matter physics colleagues did not end up in finance.
This is why I advise people to never study physical sciences or non-software engineering. There just aren’t many jobs for it in the UK. And even fewer that pay well.
I'd tend to advise people to study stuff they find interesting. I'd wager the percentage of degree holders doing a job that's directly related to their degree is in the minority, and that's not a bad thing.
But the average person takes a real risk of underemployment with that approach.
A friend of mine with a degree in marine biology works as a barista, another with a philosophy degree works as a retail assistant.
As a non-wealthy, not particularly bright creative writing major, the focus of your degree only holds you back if you let it, or if you are utterly unwilling to work outside of your focus area. Tech, especially, has an absurd number of on-ramps for anyone willing to do the tiniest modicum of extra-curricular work.
Most are becoming educated and going into significant debt to get a specific job, or salary.
But if you know you’re going into banking anyway you might as well do something vaguely relevant like accounting, economics or statistics.
I know an extremely clever young woman who graduated in performance arts. She had no difficulty in getting a job at a top tier consultancy company. This company was far more interested in her than some mediocre plodder who hacked his way through a comp. Sci degree.
Despite this, 56k people graduated in biological sciences but 24k people graduated in computer science.
(Graduation data is from 2019/20 so may have changed slightly, but unlikely enough to move the needle)
As a sibling comment has pointed out, there are too many software engineers in the UK.
I've lived in every part of England, but being in the north west for the last decade has highlighted how much our mental health can be damaged by constant grey skies and rain. A population predisposed to feeling hopeless naturally leads to a less vibrant economy.
(The weather might also be a factor here too. The elevated regions are much colder, snowier and windier, causing problems with transport. Getting between Sheffield and Manchester at this time of year can be a painful business.)
As for the weather, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Denmark are hardly renowned for their fantastic weather and they're all doing much better than North England. Meanwhile Southern Spain, Southern Italy, and Greece are lovely places but not doing well economically. I don't think the weather is a good excuse for Northern underperformance.
Weather is of course only a contributing factor, just like the historical influences.
Material wealth means having stuff. You can only get stuff by making it or taking it from the earth.
Meanwhile Chinese cities are sparkling and new, and their workers enjoy a high standard of living at low cost, not unlike Northern England or Cleveland, Ohio 100 years ago.
Because they make a lot of stuff. It’s that simple.
Once you have a strong local economy based on manufacturing, you have to drive innovation to sustain it. So you use the economic output to fund education and research, to create new categories of products and services, which create durable competitive advantage.
The U.S. has succeeded wildly with this playbook. China is currently following this playbook. The author is saying that the playbook in Northern England was interrupted by the South.
There are four high income tech/finance/media households on my culdesac in east London, thankfully including my own. Of the eight adults, I am from London but the other seven are from the midlands or north of England.
The North, like all parts of the country, has pockets of extreme affluence near areas of relative poverty, with a lot of middle income households scattered about the place too.
Talking to some southerners you’d think the whole of the North was a dump, and I worry people write off a truly beautiful part of the UK because of this misconception.
Woa is this a typo? I know little about England, and I hadn't realized that "keeping up with East German cities" is considered a success. I mean isn't East Germany rather well known for not keeping up all that well with the rest of Germany either?
Not all of the north is poor. Cheshire is richer than outer London or the home counties. If you adjust for the cost of living more of the north would be.
North poor, south rich is very simplistic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_Unite...
I think the point is that we would expect East German cities to have reasonable relative growth post-unification because we are taking a relatively structurally deprived area within a wider more successful economy.
That Manchester has kept up with areas where you'd expect to see reasonable growth, is positive. I suppose there's also the hint that this suggests that this has been allowed to happen by central government, but I could be making that up.
All the data is from the OECD using comparable definitions of the cities and collecting at https://tomforth.co.uk/humancapital/
The high paying jobs are centered around London and the financial industry (20% of UK GDP), although post-Brexit the whole country is not doing well. Glad I left in the late 80's.
Coal mining used to employee over a million people[1] at the start of the last century. It's effectively zero now.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/371069/employment-in-coa...
One of the best predictors of individual financial success is the wealth of your parents, and I wonder how many generations this effect lasts for ...
Always thought that Mark E. Smith would sing about it. I must have been wrong according to Wikipedia.
If Berlin were removed from the map, Germany as a whole would economically (loss of people, loss of income) be on average better off.
If this is the mechanism, why is Berlin not doing better?
If we could invest £10Bn and get £20Bn back for the economy with our money back over time then not a single politician would turn that down, there's actually been a load of support over the past ~5+ years for "levelling up" (AKA investment in the north) but we've not invested much because the returns are abysmal. Meanwhile there's a whole stack of projects with good returns in london, but politically it's really difficult to "give more money to london" so we don't really do them. Bakerloo line extension and crossrail 2 for example.
The Elizabeth line, will over time pay for itself entirely with fares alone, yet has also already added ~£2.50 to the economy for every £1 spent.
This is a absolutely classic example of chicken and egg, network effects and first mover advantage. There's perhaps a case for being absolutely ruthless and just spending an obscene amount of money on Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool. What might it look like?
-No third runway for heathrow, instead BHX gets 2 more runways (or MAN 1 more) and all the funding it needs to become an international hub, including an reduction in APD for 5 years or something. Central London in ~48Mins via HS2 is already committed and being built, frankly that's not that much different to what it practically takes to get from a random heathrow terminal to central.
-HS2 to Manchester AND Leeds (via the branch just above BHX), that would connect BHX to those cities in <30 Mins or so and to London much quicker.
-Trams for Leeds, maybe a metro for Manchester.
-Liverpool>Manchester>Leeds express line (which seems committed).
-Enterprise zone covering all underdeveloped commercial areas in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. Give rates, or tax relief on businesses investing, or employing in the zone, planning exemptions, easier permitting.
Anything short of an absolutely insane bet like this, just isn't going to work. Chucking 1Bn to Leeds for them to buy some trams just isn't going to have a transformative effect, it might actually be a total waste because, in short, network effects.
The North of England frequently runs a combined fiscal deficit in the tens of billions, with all of that subsidy coming, effectively, from London and the SE.
I also fail to see how London is subsidising these areas. It seems to me that they'd be much better off if they were able to run themselves. This is a classic case of purposeful under-investment. You see it in business as well. If someone wants to kill off a given project, they'll deprive it of funding to he point it can't operate properly then use the lack of profit generated as an excuse to axe it. The issue we have is that we can't just axe the North.
There is also the issue of measuring productivity. You say investments in London are more productive because they generate more profit, but consider that an equal investment in the North might have a much greater effect on the quality of life for the people living there. Should we measure investments by how much money they return or how much they improve people's lives? I am reminded of industrial strategy in the Soviet Union. They invested only in the most "productive" (highest ROI under capitalism) things such as heavy industry and very little in consumer technologies that make people happier. The result was rapid industrialisation which probably had the best effect in the long run. The question is how long term are we thinking? At some point, you've gotta start paying to make people happy instead of just investing in the most profitable area.
I mean that kind of genuinely, I see your point, but good luck trying that argument on the treasury.
It's a fact that they're subsidised. They have regional mayors, do you think a devolved solution for each northern city is really reasonable or desirable? If we think it's desirable and will stop them being subsidised then why hasn't it worked for Scotland, Wales or NI? All of which take more than they put it.
There are investments beyond transport that we could make. Not all investments generate or should be judged against short-term returns. That a 1B tram system in Leeds may be less than effective does not mean we shouldn't invest at all. I don't see why we need an insane bet rather than a programme of improvement across the board.
Bad, that the only net positive part of the entire UK comes from London and it's dependent, the SE.
It's clearly caused societal issues and apart from everything else means we're putting all our eggs in one basket. Transporting goods, energy and people into London from all over the UK is clearly worse than if we spread it around a bit.
Power in the UK is highly centralised in London, but that's not necessarily bad for regional economic development, e.g. the office ban mentioned above would not have been agreed to by southern devolved regions and the redevelopment of the former East Germany was driven by Bonn (former West Germany's capital city). Competition in government also isn't necessarily good for regional development and the corn laws and free trade that the author credits to Northern England's influence caused another famine in Ireland in 1879. It's also worth noting the North East England referendum of 2004, when London's project of devolving power to the English regions was blocked because Northern English voters overwhelmingly didn't want it.
British manufacturing suffered an unusually steep collapse relative to other western countries in the late 20th century that hit Northern England particularly hard, while the benefits of the slightly later financial services boom were inevitably focused on the country's financial centre in the South. The manufacturing collapse was partially driven by government policies, but not in the way generally thought - for decades, pre-Thatcher governments had been taking fairly regular extreme measures in response to various crises (balance of payments deficits, unbalanced regional development, oil shortages, strikes, etc.), that made life much harder for businesses. But the collapse was mainly driven by the fact that Britain in the second half of the 20th century was mind-bogglingly bad at manufacturing. I suspect that the failure of that entire section of the British economy would be a better starting point for an analysis of what went wrong in Northern England.
If you look at somewhere like South Korea, who 60 years ago had no major engineering or shipbuilding, the UK could be leagues ahead of them. The difference is that the South Koreans had the appetite and impetus to do it, whereas in the UK the government and finance planners had the exact opposite impetus.
Adding a few more examples to your list, neither Olympia (WA), Salem (OR), nor Carson City (NV) are economic or social centers of their respective states.
Sacramento may not be exciting, but it is self-sustaining with fairly high property costs and a huge commuter population. I think one of the things that makes California successful is the government is in a boring city with few distractions.
Albany is older than NYC, and anyway the concept of NYC as a single large city is barely 125 years old. The original capital of Illinois is (strangely) west of the Mississippi River and south of St. Louis. By treaty between Great Britain and France, the current area of Illinois was off limits to European settlement, until after the revolution when the US said “that treaty doesn’t apply to us”. Chicago wasn’t a big or important city until the civil war.
Los Angeles has been the wealthiest and most populous area in Alta California since like 1800 or so. But it was established as a puebla and not a mission, so it could never be a center of government under Spanish rule.
Miami was fairly unlivable until air conditioning and malaria control, and its geographic location was extraordinarily inconvenient until after the interstate system.
The US government established a customs house in Olympia when it and Seattle were little more than a handful of homesteads. And guessed wrong on which would grow faster.
Similar for the Washington Territory which was barely a collection of homesteads and tiny villages. IIRC Olympia was the first significant immigrant settlement in the northern Oregon Territory, the major (only?) early trade connection to shipping on the pacific, and connected to the few other settlers moving north in to the territory. Its not very surprising that it was the territorial capitol and remained so for the state. Yes, post statehood a lot of rail & shipping traffic moved north. But at least through the turn of the 20th century both Tacoma and Seattle were roughly equivalent in population and industry. Arguably the easier ship access for the Klondike is what cemented the prosperity of Seattle pre-war, and Boeing & related defence activity post war. But _at the time of territory & statehood_ Olympia was the major town in the region.
I've heard that the book Cities and the Wealth of Nations [0] might talk about this more. I've been meaning to read it.
[0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-cities-and...
The rail, coal and manufacturing industries crowded out other forms of enterprise economically. The related union / capitalist disputes crowded out other political activity.
Similarly the great agricultural “successes” of the Scottish Highlands in the 17th & 18th century crowded out everything else, leaving it something of a backwater ever since.
Perhaps something similar will happen to London when the time of finance comes to an end? Then finally the South West will take its turn being the heart of the British economy.
The 'ditch' (fosse) and road marked the border of the initial phase of the Roman invasion after 43 AD. It was a military road for rapid deployment of forces from the legionary bases to defend border incursions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosse_Way
Apart from the Fosse Way, almost all other major Roman roads fanned out from London. This structure is still visible in the numbering scheme of roads today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_road_numbering_s...
The natural routes for roads also influenced railways, so the boundaries of the original private railway companies (GWR, LNER, LMS, SR), and the regions of the current unified rail system, follow the same structure:
https://www.railwaygazette.com/network-rail-regions-take-ove...
Minor point, though maybe less minor in context of the original post. They are not the original private railway companies. They are the companies created in the 1920s by the London government as it forced railway companies together after it had took them under state control during ww1.
The original private railway companies were originally primarily northern companies, some of who eventually developed mainlines to the rich south eastern markets.
A large capital usually means workers and companies cluster around the government to get work and contracts, but also lobby and bribe to win such favors.
Highly centralized countries include UK, France and Thailand.
Centralized countries that have a strong geographical excuse might include Egypt and Chile.
The UK system heavily centralised in tax-and-spend powers, but heavily decentralised in veto powers. Secondary cities have used their veto powers to either stop development or make it so expensive that very little gets developed.
City centres are not being built up to concentrate talent, and I wouldn't blame London or lack of public money. Housing and rents are high enough to justify private spending on concentrated development if not for the regulatory burdens and delays.
The author points out Leeds and Manchester having no metro system that exists in other similarly sized cities. But how much of a useful metro system could Leeds build given the same money spent by Toulouse or Lyon? My guess is none, the money would be consumed by lawsuits and addressing local veto owner concerns.
HS2 is cut short because of money that people outside of London demand be spent on making it so expensive on a per-mile basis. If the line were developed similar to other lines in Europe there would be money available for the full length.
I'm somewhat bullish on Manchester in the long run, they may emerge as a second city that tolerates growth. If they develop enough to become an affordable and large city then they will attract a lot of businesses who would otherwise be in London.
In my city we have a "housing crisis" while the city council owns large empty lots in the city centre from torn down or empty buildings. They have been waiting 8 years on handouts from London to afford to develop it themselves, spending £15m so far without a single unit built. It could be sold to developers and fixed council finances, but there is such a strong aversion to allowing a private company make a profit. The council actually has assets to develop the sites, but has preferred to pursue handouts instead of spending their own money.
> HS2 is cut short because of money that people outside of London demand be spent on making it so expensive on a per-mile basis.
I'm not sure that's accurate. Cost overruns have also come from inability to find efficiencies, high inflation in the construction sector, low contingency estimate (half cross rails) and a misunderstanding of ground conditions.
The expense increases due to consultation / public demand have come from demands made on the route between London and Birmingham. For example the Chiltern tunnel extension. There aren't many cities in that gap, and most of that area is London facing rather than Birmingham or north facing.
HS2 between London and Birmingham has the worse cost:benefit ratio of the whole initial plan, and yet it's the only bit being built.
I'm pointing out the problems in the whole country outside London, not just the north. So this includes the demand for 100km of unnecessary tunnels. Tunnels that the create higher risk and uncertainty.
The best data I can suggest to try and convince yourself of this is from a fantastic London Centric article on approving 5G masts. This is just one example of how open cities are to growth, but the results are really clear --- "The end result is that in London it is uniquely hard to get permission for new equipment. According to Mobile UK’s internal data in Greater Manchester, Leeds, and Edinburgh more than 80% of requests for new masts are approved at the planning stage. In Greater London this approval rate plummets to less than 40%, one of the worst in the country."
https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-exactly-is-londons-pho...
...and now a "barrel" has more than a thousand hectolitres...?
hint: read //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsbury