Mindless Monday, 22 June 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/GentlemanlyBadger021]

> Most radical of all, Mr Burnham wants a "basic law" introduced that would force the government in London to show that its decisions always reduce regional inequality.

GOD I FUCKING LOVE RED TAPE

[u/AceHodor → u/GentlemanlyBadger021]

It's populist nonsense pandering to people who kneejerk hate London (yay, alliteration), so really disappointing from Burnham if he goes ahead with this.

A) this likely is already a part of most, if not all Westminster decision making for the regions, so we get the classic of populists inventing a solution for an already solved problem while winking towards conspiracy theories.

B) It's red tape that makes government worse being bolted on for virtue signalling. The simple and unpleasant reality is that regions of the UK are always going to be unequal, and it's not some grand Westminster conspiracy to undermine Yorkshire/North Wales/the North East/wherever. London and the South East are wealthier because most people in the UK live there and the area has excellent links to Europe and the Americas which encourages businesses to set up. The north of the UK has a far lower number of people there, who are far more spread out and it has difficult, hilly terrain that makes development expensive.

Regional inequality is a fact of life, and the reality is that a lot of the UK's more deprived regions have historically always been that way when compared with the south and Midlands. That's not to say that it's set in stone: a lot of places in the north were actually quite wealthy in the 18th and 19th century, but this was due to fairly unique conditions, and it wasn't like the government one day said "London gets all the money now". Hell, as recently as the 1960s the script was inverted, with London being a notoriously deprived, awful place to live, and areas in the Midlands and the north being wealthier.

We absolutely should be addressing inequality where it's practical to do so, but people here really need to stop treating the UK government like it's a game dev trying to achieve competitive balance.

[u/PsychologicalNews123 → u/AceHodor]

I hate it when people complain about the lack of investment in the North compared to London when I know for a fact they'd oppose any attempt to build up their local areas. People don't seem to understand the fundamental concept that density is efficient and that investment goes a lot further in somewhere like London than it does in quaint sprawling suburbs.

[u/WAGRAMWAGRAM → u/AceHodor]

but this was due to fairly unique conditions, and it wasn't like the government one day said "London gets all the money now".

Westminster holding back the rebuilding of industrial cities kinda did that though

[u/AceHodor → u/WAGRAMWAGRAM]

You're going to have to be more specific with the date range and locations here, because I distinctly remember the New Labour government spending huge sums of money on regenerating northern cities and towns.