London Vs The Regions

It is not often that I open Forbes magazine and see an article I can relate to, but it happened with the March 24 edition, which featured a piece comparing the merits of three international cities from the perspective of a billionaire.

This “City Stand-off”, as it was billed, intrigued not because I spend nights fretting about the relative costs of hotel suites and opera tickets in Moscow, London and New York, but because London is engaged in a business stand-off of its own with the rest of Britain.

Several regional development agencies are running campaigns to tempt businesses and workers away from the capital – eg, “Make it Lancashire: where business feels at home”. A report has been published showing that four businesses out of ten are considering leaving London because of soaring costs. And most significant, for me at least, I’m trying to decide whether I should move out of London, given my family live in the Midlands and I could, frankly, work from anywhere.

Inspired by the methodology of Forbes – it compiled a list of various cities’ comparable attributes – I decided to tackle the dilemma by dividing a piece of A4 into four columns, and, because the commercial relocation industry likes to talk of “push” and “pull” factors, I headed them “London (Pull)”, “Midlands (Pull)”, “London (Push)” and “Midlands (Push)”...

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