Hinterland

Possibly the title of a forthcoming post-apocalyptic film? No, but certainly getting there in terms of austerity, inequality, and a thoroughly disdainful backdrop. Rather, the hinterland I have in mind refers to the centrally neglected, indeed despised, greater part of England outside of London and the South East.
As far as governments are concerned, the majority of England is merely a remainder - the capital’s hinterland – an attitude that the ‘national’ press adopts too. Yet this hinterland is the land in which we live and which for centuries was the basis of the nation’s wealth until its assets were sold off, squandered and jobs and livelihoods discarded by corporate nest-featherers and the politicians that they finance. Still, we do have the London banks.
I use the word ‘despised’ not simply to describe the malevolent attitude of the overwhelmingly right wing press in London, appallingly lazy and ignorant though that is, but also to the attitude exemplified by a typical Westminster type with a ‘nimby’ opposition to the high speed rail project who recently said ‘Who wants to go to Birmingham anyway?’
In fact I can think of few better destinations but many better, quicker and more productive ways than HS2 to invest £40 – 80 billion of national resources and get some proper connectedness too. But if the HS2 project doesn’t go ahead you can be sure of one thing - there will be little or nothing invested in transportation infrastructure outside of the southeast. And it wouldn’t matter how angry you got about the misallocation of national resources.
Ours is just about the most over-centralised country among western democracies with local government diminished and downgraded and, despite a highly productive municipal history, held in a ruthless vice and treated with the same contempt as the cities, towns and areas that they represent.
And quite soon London, not content to be part of the .uk internet domain will be getting its own .London domain. There are times when I think that London should be separated out from the rest of the United Kingdom or even leave it altogether and allow the rest of us to focus our own resources and energies on the development, culture and common good of our own regions. Make it Mercia mark two – not to mention Northumberland!
Unrealistic no doubt, but this release of identity has happened elsewhere. Consider the ‘velvet divorce’ of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. And in terms of an over-blown metropolis, the city-state of Singapore used to be part of Malaysia until it went its own way. And Hong Kong remains at least a semi-detached part of China and of course there are many classical and medieval examples of city-states. Perhaps its time to revisit these structures and put behind us the humiliations of the hinterland.