[sievebrain]

It's not like the UK government isn't trying. The whole "Northern Powerhouse" and such.

The basic problem is that people, by and large, want to live and work in London rather than Manchester (which is I think the only credible competitor to London for mega-city status right now).

Building Crossrail isn't something where you can just sort of pick and choose where to drop it. London transport is horribly overcrowded already. If it doesn't keep up with demand then it's not like everyone will just say, oh well, we'll all just move en-masse to a different city. If that were going to happen it'd have happened already. Instead they'll just keep packing in like sardines and feel miserable.

The UK already borrows huge sums of money. It's only cheap because so many countries have been or are printing money to fund public spending, which means it's not really anywhere near as cheap as it looks.

[barnabee]

I agree with all of the above but would love to see the "Northern Powerhouse" receive tens of billions (like London) rather than the tens of millions it seems [1] to be getting so far.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/osborne-budge...