London £2,500 - £5 North East.

[Workingman]

We have always known that London benefits hugely simply by being London, but the above figures, for transport infrastructure, take the biscuit. The figures might be the extremes, but in general London still benefits twice as much as the regions.

I wonder in how many other areas of infrastructure London gets to use the lion's share of the country's funds, due to the London centric thinking of MPs, bushiness and the media? I will bet that there are a few.

There is a lot of anger in the "London versus the rest" way the country is run and any political party willing to stand up and say that it will change things, dramatically, will get a good polls boost.

[Kaz]

The whole country is run in a very London centric kind of way I think.......coming from that area myself and having lived in other parts of the country I do notice it

It is the same with this much-vaunted property price rise - it is mostly (not all I admit) in the SE and London but being vaunted as country wide The prices round here don't seem to be rising much, if at all, although admittedly property is moving a bit more quickly.......

Same with the so-called end to the recession - it all looks pretty shiny and good in the SE when we visit but around here things are still pretty bad

The gap is widening.....

[Workingman]

The whole London thing is a fiasco.

I remember the phone number changes - inner London, outer London. Businesses began to believe their own propaganda that if you were in inner London you were a class act, outer London, you might as well have been on Mars, or worse: The North!

Businesses move to, or start up in, London, but then have to pay higher wages to get their workers because it is so expensive. They are not getting higher quality or better workers for their money. Higher wages then mean the workers pay more for things because other people are taking advantage of them, all the way up to houses..... and so the carousel turns.

[Suff]

Your answer is right here.

When you produce 22% of the UK economy with less than 10% of the population, you expect to get more... It really is that simple.

[Workingman]

What is simple to understand is that about 90% of that 22% comes from a few sectors of London's economy. The other 8,000,000 Londoners are no more or less productive than their teacher, bus driver, fire fighter, supermarket manger, consultant surgeon, gardener, hotel receptionist, road sweeper colleagues in Hull, Halifax or Hell.

More than half of the London Stock Exchange top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London.

They do not need to be there, though, they could be anywhere, but they have bought into the propaganda. Marks & Spencer, London, sounds a lot better than Marks & Spencer, Leeds, yet it is a Leeds company, started on a 1d market stall: the forerunner of the £1 shops of today.

Move Government, the City and the Stock Exchange to Hull and watch Hull grow.

[Suff]

When I worked in ABN Amro bank 60% of the disposable profit was created by treasury and capital markets in London. Anyone who could, would hook into that for money. No demographics in a company but the same rules apply. If your local environment is making the money, you benefit.

Directors and company HQ's come to London because that's where everything else is. Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, they are all the same. Here in France they say "all roads lead to Paris" and they're not just talking about the physical road infrastructure (just look at a map).

This is part of life. Money gravitates to Money. If you look at the North East, you'll see that it produces very little to the economy (today), and takes a lot out in benefits and social services.

I've lived this in Scotland, which is easier to understand, but travelling to London just to work or have meetings is not a comfortable process. Especially weekly.

I've noticed that in the UK, people want a strong country, an impressive capital city, a powerful economy, yet they don't want someone in the country which is creating this to have more than them.... Bit of a conflict of interest. Impressive capital cities draw money, power and influence....

There have always been rich and poor. There always will be rich and poor. However in the Soviet Union there were peasants and their rulers who were insanely rich and insanely powerful.

I like what we have, it works....

[Workingman]

Nobody is complaining about London making money for the country or for it being the centre of many things.

It has been our capital for many centuries and the seat of absolute Monarchs, long before "Government" existed. It is no wonder that many of our institutions are based there, that is how it has evolved. Its history makes it the place it is, and a huge tourist attraction. It is unique in terms of British cites.

However, let us not pretend that it did it on its own, certainly not since the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was the port of Empire and Birmingham the engine room. Manchester was built on cotton, Bradford on wool and Sheffield on steel, and it was pointless sending coals to Newcastle because it had enough. London merchants did very well indeed trading goods made in those places.

It is now a bit rich to besmirch those places as a drain when the industries they were built on either died a natural death or were purposely killed off by London government. They have nearly all survived, and are growing again, but it has been done against the backdrop of London being the black hole of the internal economy.