Make Northern Money Talk

In answer to an anonymous comment on my post about how the North East and Merseyside are treated as outside the loop, I propose an association of members, each paying an annual subscription as the core around which to organise further fund-raising.

Across the historic counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland, each locality's smallest local authority above Parish or Town level would be "twinned", for the association's purposes, with an authority of comparable population in Scotland, another such in Wales, and a third in London or the South East.

The aim would be for not less than equality between the Northern area and each of its three "twins" in employment, in wages, in incomes overall, and in both spending and outcomes in relation to each of education, training, health, social services, housing, transport, law and order, and culture, media and sport.

In every year when this was the case across all the areas in question, then the monies raised would be divided equally among the offices of all MPs. But in any year when it was not thus the case, then those monies would be divided equally among the members as a sort of dividend.

Organisation on the same model should also be set up in the Midlands, in the West Country, in East Anglia, in Northern Ireland, in the North of Scotland, in the South of Scotland, and in North, Mid and West Wales. And all these organisations should co-operate as closely as possible with each other.