I am happy for Bradford.

[Workingman]

Really, I am. Today it opened a new shopping centre, some would say a new city centre. For over ten years there was nothing but a hole in the ground, quite literally, a wasteland. The hope is that it will help regenerate Bradford, and believe me, it needs a lot of regeneration.

Leeds and Bradford city centres are only ten miles apart, but the two cities could be on different worlds.

The problem for me is that cities and a country cannot thrive on shopping alone, there needs to be other things. Jobs are essential, and few cities on their own do not have the clout to create them, especially when traditional industries have moved abroad. Places like Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh might be able to, but others cannot.

Something needs to be done at government and national level to spread the load.

Companies need to be persuaded, and bribed if necessary, to locate in places other than London and the S.E. before it is too late. We are already in the position that London and the S.E. are overfull. We need to stop development there and create opportunities elsewhere.

[Kaz]

I think perhaps Leeds and Bradford have a similar situation to Gloucester and Cheltenham. We are only 10 miles from Cheltenham but they are poles apart! Cheltenham is very posh (loads of money about, lots of investment) and Gloucester......well..............isn't!

[Kaz]

I did live in Bradford, very briefly, in '78/79 - my first husband came from there, but I haven't been back since the early '80s.

[Suff]

WM, if they want business and money to flow North then they are going to have to get the infrastructure. You, along with others, are dead set against HS2. Great, then forget businesses going north. Basically the road infrastructure, rail links and local amenities are a fraction of what you can get in the SE and London. Even then the traffic is not really that much better either. The whole country is becoming one large car park at rush hour. The biggest difference being that rail links are massively less in the Midlands and the North than they are in the South.

This is always a problem with Capital cities. Monarchs, dictators, whatever, they all pushed massive funds into their capital cities and way less into the boonies. Creating the issue we have. Think it's bad in the UK? All roads lead to Paris. Almost literally. It's only EU money which has started building non Paris Hub roads in the last 3 decades.

At least in the UK we have London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow as major transport hubs. In France you have Paris, Lyon and, to a much lesser extent, Bordeaux.

People who want to encourage business need to think high speed low hassle transport, excellent hospitality and places of interest and amenities. ALL of these have to be in place FIRST, before you start sucking in business.

Well, of course, there is the other tried and tested method of sucking in business. Half rate taxes.... That'll do it every time. Amazing how many hotels, pubs, stations and airports businesses can do without if you double their net profit....

I often hear about the lack of opportunity in the North. But those in government who talk loudest about it are also those who think least about what it takes to get business to come.

I'm glad for Bradford, but I don't expect to see the Midlands sucking up southern economic business any time soon. There is simply no concept of what needs to be done in order to make it appealing.

[Workingman]

Rail links? Roads?

We simply have not had anything like the same spend as London/SE - for anything.

These things are supposed to be done on a *national* basis, but only one area gets them.

I am against HS2 because it does not benefit the Midlands or North or Scotland, it mainly benefits London. If the same money was spent linking Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham it would be money well spent.

In modern times there is no reason for companies to have their HQs in London... except for the address and phone number. M&S is a Leeds Co, why is its HQ in London? The same applies to many other companies.

[Kaz]

Well said Frank, The same goes for most of the West and South West, buggar-all investment

[Workingman]

Kaz, it bugs me, it really does.

So, you're some whizz kid with 'aspirations' and you want to set up some sort of company. Where will it be? Cleckheaton, Truro or (boom, boom) London.

Well, shoot me down... It's London. I mean, who wants their global brand to be associated with Clecky or Truro? Hey, they all have boroadband and 240v electricity, in some places they even have cars, but they are not in London.

Sorry, but government, the media and PR, all South based, drive this b0llocks thinking. The North/South divide is not driven by the North, but by the South protecting itself.

Give us equal resources and we will thrash you, so will most other places.

[Suff]

I am against HS2 because it does not benefit the Midlands or North or Scotland, it mainly benefits London. If the same money was spent linking Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham it would be money well spent.

In modern times there is no reason for companies to have their HQs in London... except for the address and phone number. M&S is a Leeds Co, why is its HQ in London? The same applies to many other companies.

It would be money wasted because it would not have the links to the high population centres and so would be totally underused.

26 million people live in London and the southern counties. That is almost half of England. Now if you look at the money spent, it's not half. These are tax payers and relatively high tax payers too. What would you do? Deny them the benefit of the taxes they pay?

The solution, as always, is to create the opportunity and then encourage people to go there. With current rail links, you can be in Brussels from Kings Cross about 20 minutes after you would have arrived in Manchester. Ditto Paris. Add to the fact that UK rail prices are going through the roof and you can just about live in Paris and work in London instead of the North of England.

If we want investment and people in the North, then we need transport links commensurate with that wish. HS2 would have brought a high speed link out of London to a west coast rail and air hub. It will then cost a slight fraction of the cost of another rail link out of London to hub to the Midlands and North from Birmingham. Granted I'd rather see a HS3 up the East Coast main line but, let's face it, Birmingham and Manchester are main cities with international air hubs. If we are going to make high speed links then we need to make them where the people are travelling to.

If you think about it, HS2 could easily replace Heathrow runway 4 or a fifth London airport. HS2 would be almost as fast from Birmingham to London as the Arlanda Express is from Stockholm Arlanda Airport to the city. That is a massive opportunity. Not taking it is tantamount to saying you don't want to expand outside of the south and London.

I recall when the 125's started running on the east coast lines. There was a big buzz, Newark was 55 minutes from Kings Cross, it was almost commutable, people would move out of the south and start living in the midlands...

Roll forward 30 years and. Newark is 1h5 minutes from London on the "225". The service is so expensive nobody would consider commuting on it. Cities on the way up that line remain what they were, small, provincial and lacking in the kind of services offered in the cities in the south. HS2 is not just an expensive project. It's vital to get people out of the south and distributed more evenly around the country.

Opportunities lost.

All it takes is a bit of lateral thinking.

[Workingman]

26 million? Where the hell did that figure come from? 1/3 of the UK population, never mind that of England: I think not. The vast majority of us do not live in London or the S.E. we live all over the place. What we do not get is the same spend per head as London and the S.E..

Yes. London makes a lot of money, but that is because a lot of money is invested there by the UK government and businesses. Give Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow the same level of funding as London gets and they will do equally well.

London is a magnet simply because it is the capital, yet other countries have industry HQs outside their capitals because that is where the started. The UK needs to get away from its London-centric model.

[cromwell]

Really, I am. Today it opened a new shopping centre, some would say a new city centre. For over ten years there was nothing but a hole in the ground

At one point it filled up with water and was christened "The Bay of Bengal" by some non-pc locals.

The hope is that it will help regenerate Bradford, and believe me, it needs a lot of regeneration.

Doesn't it just?

I used to occasionally have to go to Bradford for work, via the the A650 from Wakey and as I went down the long hill into Bradford my heart did used to sink. Dirty, poor looking.. on either side of the road were old terraces, everything looked broken down, unfinished, rough. The city centre was like a 1960's concrete nightmare, but again unfinished and dirty. Even the car park I used to park in was on the site of demolished old terraces. You culd still see the outlines of the pavements and the surface was mostly old house bricks and muck.

All the old industries have gone and nothing much has replaced them. My best guess is that what will happen in Bradford is what has happened in Wakefield. You just end up moving the city centre a bit, from one place to the next. The Trinity Walk shopping centre has opened in Wakefield and is (mostly) doing OK. But areas of the traditional city centre are dying. Previously bustling areas like Westgate and Kirkgate are run down now, with closed shops and quiet streets.

There is only so much money to go round; you can't spend what you don't have and new shopping centres are not (in my town anyway) creating more wealth, they are just shifting it about a bit!