‘Is there really a North/South water taste divide?’ Upon emerging from a post dissertation hand-in, alcohol induced haze this was the cutting edge journalism that the BBC could provide me with this morning. Please, someone take me back to my pre-dissertation deadline Brotherton hovel, it was undeniably more thrilling. Setting aside the fact that Aunty felt the need to spend part of her budget funding a study into the taste, smell and texture of water from across the UK with a supposed panel of experts to come up with some kind of winner; why was the initial assumption or the article that if some kind of divide in the quality of the most every day of liquids, it would be a north south divide. Aren’t we over that yet?

For a start the terms North and South have no fixed meaning outside of American Civil War epics or the ultra-extremes of Korean neighbourly relations. In terms of the U.K you just have to talk to people to discover this.  Someone from Croydon will tell you the north is ‘anywhere above the M25’ where as an angry Geordie will dismiss you as a southerner if you have ever ‘been below Hartlepool. Pet.’ Those from Manchester and Liverpool fiercely defend their ‘northern roots’ and moan about Hyde Park and Headingly being a ‘a bubble of Home Counties, Public School types’ which they clearly see as a bad thing, but no one really seems to know why. What if you live in Birmingham? Well, aside from being generally unfortunate, you’ll constantly be reminded that the Midlands doesn’t really exist in the common psyche, being either in the North or the South dependent on who you ask. Let’s not even get started on Scotland, clearly in the north geographically, but somehow viewed as inexpensive, rural extension of London; or Wales and East Anglia, which confuse everyone simply by sticking out somewhat.

Maybe thirty years ago, when images of the gritty industrial northern cities compared to the relative prosperity of places like Bath and Exeter held some value, a north south divide was fully applicable. Yet, just because an economic difference exists between London and the rest of the U.K today, it doesn’t mean the rhetoric is still applicable. If you absolutely had to divide the country economically with a single line, it would probably start somewhere in Essex, encircle the capital, Berkshire and Hampshire before heading down towards Brighton. Hardly a North/South divide is it?

Despite this the North/South rhetoric pervades. One look at the media in the aftermath of Thatcher’s death confirmed this. ‘North Happy! South Sad!’ dominated the press. Yet, this was as ridiculous as the use of tax payers’ money to fund a study into the taste of water and it drew the same conclusions. Certainly regional variance exists, water is tastier in areas with more hills (the genius level science from the Beeb continues) and towns ruined by the closure of the mines don’t like Maggie. Yet we have are lucky enough to have both the Chilterns and the Pennines and there were mines in both Tyneside and South Wales. Admittedly,  economically London and it’s immediate surroundings may be a special case, yet as we sit in modern Leeds, the industrial legacy just about visible through the urban renewal, you can hardly argue for the maintenance of this North/South paradigm, can you?