Campaign reaches climax

At the risk of sounding like actress Meg Ryan in the film When Harry met Sally when she demonstrates in a crowded cafe how women fake orgasm, I wanted to scream Yes, Yes, Yes on reading reports of a speech by a Government minister this week.
Shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis was giving a speech at a conference on the impact of MediaCity in Manchester, when he said opponents of the BBC’s decision to relocate parts of its television and radio output to Salford were living in the dark ages and should drop their outdated prejudices against the North of England. Yes.
He said the corporation would be strengthened by employing a more diverse talent pool and viewing events not solely through a London-centric prism. Yes.
Detractors he said should stop seeing Britain as London plus the rest. Yes.
As a freelance based in the Lake District, which attracts 15 million visitors a year, it is so frustrating trying to convince London-based news organisations that events in Britain’s playground are of any interest to their readers, viewers and listeners.
As newspapers have shed jobs, they have less staff based in the North; and they have become totally reliant on the same homogenous diet of politics, celebrity and economy.
They increasingly ignore the lives of real people, and wonder why their sales have plummeted. This trend may not be wiped out by a move to Manchester, but it will break the stranglehold on their imaginations caused by the obsessions of the Capital.