please empty your brain below
Well that was interesting. It really brought home just how big is this town of my birth. You have shown me that I’ll never live long enough to see it all.

Jo W | 19.12.21 - 7:48 a.m. | #

House of Commons library, published last week:

“Among the English regions, public spending per person was lowest in the East Midlands at £12,133 (10% below the UK average) and highest in London at £15,490 (15% higher than the UK average).”

Jim | 19.12.21 - 8:03 a.m. | #

London produces a quarter of the country's taxes and generates a huge fiscal surplus -- which is then sent to the regions.
Yet it is also home to some of the poverty-stricken areas in the country.

Chris | 19.12.21 - 8:44 a.m. | #

Genuinely very enlightening, as someone now living in London who is from Derby and has spent a lot of time in Leeds. I'd love someone to knock together a fancy interactive overlay thing. I wonder whether it's possible in Google maps. Something to do over this Christmas downturn/lockdown. Cheers!

Gunnersaurus | 19.12.21 - 9:27 a.m. | #

This is a mental exercise I carry out myself, although I've simplified it to the old A-Z page map (ignoring pages 4, 5, 6, 7, 142-144), so 24 miles north/south x 32 miles east/west, with north = Enfield, south = Coulsdon, west = Hayes and east = Romford.

So as you've pointed out, areas that we would consider distinct (e.g. Liverpool and Manchester), would be within the London blob.

Perhaps we ought to introduce the 'London Economic Unit', every area of the UK is divvied up into an area the size of London.

In terms of how much money London generates, don't neglect the commuter belt - in other words how many of those working in London have travelled in from outside.

Still Anon | 19.12.21 - 10:07 a.m. | #

it's very easy to do map overlays by taking screenshots from the wonderful Colour Your Own OS Map site and merging them in an Office document. Here is a Canterbury-Margate-Dover one that I knocked up in a few minutes.

NickW | 19.12.21 - 10:33 a.m. | #

London is home to 9 million people, about one person in every 7½ for the whole of the UK. It produces the most taxes because it is on average the richest region. For example, gross disposable household income of over £30k, compared to the UK average of £21k. The top five areas are all in London (Kensington, Westminster, Camden, Wandsworth, Hounslow) and all more than twice the lowest five (Nottingham, Leicester, Sandwell, Blackburn, Hull). Source: ONS

Not that tax revenues are necessary to fund public spending when the government can instruct the Bank of England to create money for it to spend at will, as it has demonstrated several times since 2008.

Andrew | 19.12.21 - 10:45 a.m. | #

Wow, fascinating.
Now I have something new to ponder when I'm supposed to be going to sleep!

Cornish Cockney | 19.12.21 - 10:47 a.m. | #

Really interesting, especially that Liverpool Manchester comparison

Mikey C | 19.12.21 - 11:08 a.m. | #

I'm originally Mancunian. I would not consider a trip from Heathrow to Upminster any less expeditionary than Liverpool to Manchester

Mike Roberts | 19.12.21 - 11:48 a.m. | #

I read the last sentence of your blog entries first just to see the malice that you have for today.

Surbitonian | 19.12.21 - 12:09 p.m. | #

I don't think I'll ever forget the time I got to fully appreciate the scale of my home city. I had a window seat on a late evening flight from Milan to Stansted.

As the plane travelled up over France I could actually pick out the Eiffel Tower to know we were passing over Paris. It was a biggish pool of light.

The identity of the next concentration of light was less obvious but my guess was that it was Belgium, probably Brussels. Hmmm, maybe not as big as Paris but still a decent size.

Then we crossed the Channel and for some reason didn't go straight to Essex but began circling over London.
O - M - G !!! My next two thoughts were 'Now that is what you call a city!' followed by 'and, hey, that's my city!'

RogerW | 19.12.21 - 12:35 p.m. | #

This was fascinating. I'd love to see that as a moveable map, in fact it would be wonderful to have a world map where you could enter sizes of countries and cities and then move the outline of them around to see the comparisons. That probably already exists somewhere!

Jayne | 19.12.21 - 12:49 p.m. | #

I grew up in Upminster, and spent the last 30 years in Manchester. I'd rather attempt the Manc-Liv journey by public or private transport, than the Upm-Heathrow version! But the former puts the central of the metropolis somewhere near Warrington, so I might not stop off on the way through for the museums and galleries.

mark addy | 19.12.21 - 1:54 p.m. | #

..but despite London's size and the financial contribution it makes, the government is still determined to reduce funding for TfL, ostensibly as part of its levelling up/down project. Meanwhile most other public transport in the country is being helped out through the pandemic, and most other big cities in the world have subsidised public transport.

ActonMan | 19.12.21 - 4:09 p.m. | #

Jayne, if you come back, try this; www.thetruesize.com

Mike | 19.12.21 - 8:04 p.m. | #

Mike, thank you so much!

Jayne | 19.12.21 - 8:32 p.m. | #

The thing this hammers home to me is how London has subsumed surrounding towns and villaes each with their own civic identity, now much diminished. In doing so it's become something greater than the sum of its parts.

I can't help but wonder if the fortunes of other places would have fared better if they'd taken on a similar role, so Bolton, Altrincham etc becoming bits of Manchester rather than "pretending" to be their own thing, with local govt structures supporting this. The bigger the better with cities in terms of their success.

E | 20.12.21 - 1:17 p.m. | #

Manchester/Liverpool is interesting because despite them being two very clearly different towns, there's a lot of urban sprawl down the East Lancs Road. Leigh is in Manchester, but their accent has already turned quite Liverpuddlian. Where is Newton-le-Willows? St Helens is already clearly Liverpool. And yet if you suggested they were in any way similar, you'd have a lot of backlash!

Kirk | 22.12.21 - 11:58 a.m. | #











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