[thebruce87m]

Note that when an English person says the north, they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about the north of England, not the north of the UK even if everyone else is talking about the UK.

[dendodge]

Similarly, Americans expect people to be aware that California is not "the South", despite being on the southern border, and that the Midwest is actually in the eastern half of the country.

Basically the names of geographical regions don't always make sense.

[pjc50]

It's a very moveable dividing line depending on where the speaker is from, there's no Mason-Dixon line here. Can mean anywhere north of London.

No normal person refers to Scotland as "north UK" when they could say Scotland, though.

[twic]

You do occasionally see "North Britain" for Scotland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Britain

It was once common, and in modern times it's occasionally used as a deliberate affectation.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

When I grew up (in London), Watford was always the "gateway to the north".

On the other hand, Balham was the "gateway to the south" (which reached as far as the Mediterranean).

[rjmunro]

I think the original phrase was "North of the Watford Gap", but people often mis-abbreviate to "North of Watford". The Watford Gap is not the same place as Watford. It's about 75 miles north of London. Watford is within London's motorway ring road (The M25), and on the underground map. Its only about 17 miles away from the centre.

[reedf1]

Did you know that most people outside the US do not intuitively understand the arbitrary US delineations for North, South, West, Midwest? And yet, "they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about..."

[AlotOfReading]

Though Scotrail was just as bad for many years, so it was a bit of a moot point until a few years ago.

[naming_the_user]

Every country does this, the US south, midwest etc are nonsense geographically.