THE NORTH or THE SOUTH?

[Danger Man]

And Derby is just fine too.

Which is why you live in London.

Right.

[Serge]

Which is the joke I already made.

[Danger Man]

Which is the joke I already made.

Fair enough. But there's no point telling people how 'fine' Derby is when your actions speak louder than words.

It was a decent little town 15 years ago but it's been ruined by recent developments. It's a real shame.

[Serge]

Well, my actions are more to do with the fact I like London better than Derby, but that doesn't mean I dislike Derby. I don't live in York, either, but that's a lovely place - you can't live everywhere that you like. I have seriously thought about moving back at some point, admittedly because I miss my family more than anything, but the idea doesn't make me shudder with horror.

The developments in Derby are no better or worse than the same kind of thing I've seen in pretty much every town I've been to in England, to be honest.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Derby is everything I don't like about English towns rolled into one pointless featureless shithole.

[_Hypnotoad_]

Do you uncouth, inbred northerners realise that "cockneys" are restricted to a tiny part of east-London?

The rest of us are just Londoners, not mockneys, not essex wideboys; Londoners.

-edit- wait, this has nothing to do with city vs countryside

So, THE SOUTH, or at least a big city like Manchester if I was ever forced to slum it with you awful people

[the midnight watch baboon]

Ten years in the NORTH have led to me now finding most SOUTHern accents annoying, especially the Lock, Stock wannabe London satellite towns.

[Jemble Fred]

dull countryside THE SOUTH

Wow. Just no fucking way. Surely you mean the most beautiful rolling pastures on this planet? Not that I dislike the bleakness of north country views, Peak District and all that jazz, but on the rural landscape front, the South wins hands down.

There's very little difference between North and South really, the only really palpable thing that occurs to me when I travel from one to the other is that it's a hell of a lot cheaper up North (it's fun to pretend it's 1995 when you get there), which is a definite win on that score.

EDIT: I didn't know we had this option. FUCK NORTH AND SOUTH, WEST IS BEST.

[the midnight watch baboon]

North edges it for me, scenery-wise, though I haven't seen enough of the west. The peaks and dales in the summer are far from bleak though; they is  bright an' beauty.

[Ginyard]

I just don't care. Accents and attitudes change from one house to the next and scenery from one end of a long street to another. The idea that one side of an imaginary line is somehow better than another is a bit daft to say the least. However, Leeds is shit. Don't make me live there.

_{why does typing this here feel wrong without a limerick?}

[Jemble Fred]

Leeds is shit.

No, we sorted that out in another thread last week. Leeds is really nice.

[Ginyard]

Way no!

[sirhenry]

Why aye!

[Serge]

Derby is everything I don't like about English towns rolled into one pointless featureless shithole.

Don't sit on the fence, Shoulders.

[the midnight watch baboon]

I got very lost in Leeds last week, and I just can't forgive and forget.

[_Hypnotoad_]

The last time I ventured outside of the M25 was to Leicester

Never again

[Danger Man]

You can't live everywhere that you like.

True. If I had to choose 'the best place to live' based on a number of entirely selfish and probably quite contradictory desires then I'd be looking for some kind of 'Shangri-la'.

But something a bit like the Chilterns...a Chilterns not populated by tens of thousands of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' type wankers....does such a place exist??

[Neville Chamberlain]

Well I didn't like to say it, but I was pretty much only talking about Nottingham too (soz boki).

Cheers for the shout out Danger Man, and as a big up to you I should point out that you shot up even further in my estimation when you sang the praises of The Lincolnshire Poacher the other day. A fine pub.

I really must try that pub sometime. I've walked past it a few times.

Since living in Nottingham, which is a bit like a gateway to the NORTH, and marrying a lady from Bolton, I've only recently really started going to the NORTH. Of course, this only really includes the Manchester/Bolton area (on a side note, why is practically everyone on the telly these days from Bolton?!?!? I literally can't move for Bolton accents, which is fine by me as it's a great accent!) and a trip to Wakefield and Leeds. I was only there for a gig at the O2 Academy and I went into the city the day after for a bit of a stroll.

However, I'm a southerner from Somerset and it really is an absolutely lovely county, what with Exmoor, the Quantocks, the levels, plus it's just a short drive to Devon and Dorset.

Oh fuck it, I don't know - everywhere's great!

And Nottingham is the greatest (except for the library!).

(And Derby's a dump!)

I'll tell you what really pisses me off - the fact that it's always, always Derby that gets onto the national weather map after the news. They never put Nottingham on there, the scumbags!!!

[Neville Chamberlain]

But something a bit like the Chilterns...a Chilterns not populated by tens of thousands of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' type wankers....does such a place exist??

Yes, the Quantocks in Somerset!

[Jack Shaftoe]

No true Derbian recognises the Westfield.

It's the Eagle Centre or nowt. Actually, the Eagle Centre's probably been pulled down now, hasn't it?

I went to college in Derby, which was good for gothing about, what with it being in the Rock Triangle of Nottingham, and erm... I'm sure it was in some kind of Rock Triangle.

*fades away, looking confused*

[purlieu]

I lived in Manchester and visited other parts of The North for about eight years, and have lived in The South the rest of the time.

It took me a while to like The North - there definitely seemed to be more camaraderie and community, but that sometimes felt like it was because everyone knew it was a bit shit so banded together to make the best of it. The girls are better looking in the North, I'd say. Overall, worse weather up there, better attitude, cheaper housing and pretty much everything else, but it can be fucking bleak and miserable, with a much higher ratio of people not really enjoying where they are. Northern attitudes of 'I speak my mind, me' took a bit of getting used to as well, and often felt like an excuse to be a bit aggressive and insensitive then immediately letting yourself off the hook by harking back to Northern concepts of 'saying it how it is'.

The South? Happier people generally, but annoyingly concerned with how much they have or their social status. Prettier landscape if you prefer not to look at haunting desolate wasteland, sorry, T'Moors. Far less bothered about being Southern than Northerners are about being Northern, and more tactful and passive, on the whole. Then again, you get a mix everywhere don't you.

This.

Being from the middle of the Midlands, I've experienced the north and south from a reasonably unbiased frame of mind, and do find myself 'siding' with the north on the whole.  I like the slightly grimmer, working class pride type thing maybe, I don't trust people with lots of money.  I'm not a big fan of lovely rolling hills, prefering bleaker, more dramatic countryside that takes your breath away.  And, unfortunately, I've barely liked anyone I've met from the south, with all of my closest friends being from the north.  My girlfriend is the major exception, coming from Folkestone.  She was unaware the difference or divide even existed, and I've found that tends to be true on the whole for those in the south.  This has caused major problems when deciding where to move to once we leave Leeds, however, and I think we're compromising by heading midlands-way.  Which is a shame, as the midlands is a cackhole which I vowed never to return to.

[Hank_Kingsley]

Yorkshire is very pretty.

The landscape, the buildings, the other stuff.

I found the people to be perfectly pleasant too.

Of everywhere in England I like Cambridge most of all though.

Cambridge.

[Jemble Fred]

Cambridge.

Does anyone like Oxford though? I only ask because my one trip there showed it to be a dirty, grey, actively smelly city. BUT! I reflected that I'd only been between the train station and a theatre in the city centre, and a bit around the canals. So I put it down to my bad luck that I missed the dreaming spires and so on.

But oddly, since then, I've had three separate people mention to me that they've visited Oxford for the first time, and been stunned by its ugliness. Not including Stephen "As close as you can get to hell without moving to Oxford" Fry. It's sort of become a place it seems a lot of folk are repelled by. I'd be interested to hear where the nice bits are, for future reference.

Also, ideally where the rabbit hole is. Maybe they've built a carpark over it.

[Hank_Kingsley]

Oxford is for CUNTS.

They ripped off the 'Bridge of Sighs' (though they claim they didn't) and just stuck in the middle of the street.

All the buildings are a bunch of Harry Potter shite.

Cambridge has Pink Floyd, Oxford has Radiohead.

That's the difference.

[boxofslice]

Everyone knows that people from the SOUTH are greedy and selfish.  I live in the SOUTH.

[the midnight watch baboon]

Cambridge is lovely; picturesque, charming, adjectivey. Add a 'shire' onto it however, and it conjurs up images on knackered, charmless towns and flat, lifeless scenery and peeple.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

From my limited experience, Northern girls are better looking, friendlier and have cooler accents, but also have more of a tendency to slap the facepaint on to a ridiculous degree.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Cambridge is lovely; picturesque, charming, adjectivey. Add a 'shire' onto it however, and it conjurs up images on knackered, charmless towns and flat, lifeless scenery and peeple.

It's the inverse of Derbyshire.

Let's please not discuss Bedfordshire or Northamptonshire for very long. Let's not even get started on Peterboroughshire.

[The Widow of Brid]

FUCK NORTH AND SOUTH, WEST IS BEST.

What Jemble Fred said (or what I assume he said. I couldn't read clearly through the Bath smog of menopausal lady fug and tea shop steam).

[Jemble Fred]

From my limited experience, Northern girls are better looking, friendlier and have cooler accents

Hmm, Northern-wise only the scouse accent does it for me on a lady. Manc, Yorkshire etc accents aren't really attractive. And Geordie certainly is the least attractive accent in the UK, to my western ears, nails down a blackboard.

But then you weren't talking about sexy were you, but cool. God knows what a cool accent would be, something like the Cat in Red Dwarf I guess.