True story. When I married Mrs NI we were both teaching in the same school in Newcastle. When they asked us where we were going to live we told the other staff we’d bought a house south of the River Tyne. They were genuinely aghast, as was my father in law who saw it as akin to moving to a third world country!
Saw an interesting map of the UK showing what was captioned “the real North/South divide. The line ran pretty much from Grimsby down towards Notts and Derby, then south of Birmingham towards Bristol. Everything S & E of this being the affluent south. Everything N & W being the impoverished north.
So maybe it’s not a geographical issue but a sociopolitical one?
