The idea that “rich London” lords it over the “poor North” in part because it gets more than its fair share of public funds is one of the great over-simplifications of our time, helping to obscure the existence of geographical inequalities within the cities and regions of the UK as well as between them.
Big Media are often complicit in this. For example, this article from January focussed entirely on how former Labour “red wall” parliamentary constituencies in the North of England could lose out under the Conservative’s “fair funding” local government spending review and didn’t mention that six of the 30 local authority areas set to lose the most are in London, including the biggest potential loser of all, Barking & Dagenham. That was despite the fact that the borough topped a list accompanying the article.
Barking & Dagenham Council leader, Darren Rodwell, is not, as you might imagine, convinced that the government’s idea of “fair funding” is very fair at all. He’s made a little film explaining why.
More on Barking & Dagenham’s displeasure here.
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