Whenever I’ve travelled to a different country or have met people from around the world, in the first moments of us getting to know one another, they hear I’m English and they inevitably ask me if I’m from London. I tend to laugh in response, and then we begin the charade of me saying a city they’ve no idea about, and then I try to help them place me by talking about football teams – most of the time we settle on Manchester. Which, of course, if anyone knows anything about the war of the roses and the subsequent beef between Yorkshire and Lancashire, they’ll know that there’s a whole lot of difference between the two areas. Not least in accent.

I don’t mind at all that people from different countries have never heard of Bradford: why should they care? What cuts a little though, is the amount of times I’ve had to have this exact conversation with people from the south of England. Some of them don’t even know what I’m talking about when I mention Leeds! Leeds is a big city!!! And it’s not just that many people don’t know where cities in the north are, it’s the bitter pill that the only place which seems to be of any significance to them is London.

But why care so much?

Well, I care because of the huge economic differences between the north and south of England, and the consequences this has on the lives of the people in the two areas.

I’d never really had much to do with London and the south growing up, other than seeing the London schools on CBBC getting the random celebrity visitors, or knowing that London was where the Queen lived, and that it was really far away from Bradford – in more ways than just distance. But this isn’t the part where I say I grew up in an impoverished household, where my parents had to work 3 jobs for us to eat , because my ability to see the wealth-gap between the north and south isn’t reliant on my family’s economic situation. My parents know what it is to be on the dole, and they have never had any savings, but I’ve never been poor. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know what it looks like, though.

Poverty isn’t just about the money you have, but a secure financial situation gifts people and communities so much more than you might first think. If a family is wealthy, and thus money isn’t something they have to worry about, then they have so much more time, energy and resources to do other things. For example, they can buy books, or go to a different city or country, or buy a membership to a gym. They have the ability to see value in investing in cultural capital: learning to play an instrument, or reading a book is no longer deemed as a ‘waste’, and so many more things like going to university or moving to a bigger city to do an internship seem attainable. Money gives people time and opportunity, and economic stability allows people the freedom to think further than what they need to survive.

So no wonder when I drove into central London last week, the majority of people I saw looked healthier and wealthier than those I’d seen in Shipley earlier that morning. You could see economic stability in the fact that their skin colour didn’t look tired and yellow; fewer people were overweight; more were nicely dressed, in clothes they’d carefully picked out to suit their bodies; all of the shops were open, and around every corner there was a museum or a gallery or a theatre. You can literally see the differences, if you’re bothered to look.

Unfortunately, the last time I spoke about a north-south class divide, was when I wrote a description of my experience as a northerner at a Russell Group University. I did my best to not be overly critical of people, but still that blog was reported by at least 100 members of my university’s Facebook group, and it helped to get me blocked from the page for over a year. So, it would seem that this desire to ignore and neglect the uncomfortable parts of our society we blamed on older generations, persists into psyche of the ‘progressive’ millennials.

It gets very tiring very quickly to be stereotyped as a stupid northerner, from the middle of nowhere, when you know that those stereotypes are rooted in blatant economic inequality. So no, I don’t find it very funny when I sit on a delayed tube and make a joke saying ‘none of this in Bradford’, and a super healthy, well-dressed, young girl with a southern accent says ‘is there anything in Bradford?’. Because regardless of how she intended it, or whether she’s a nice girl or not, it just doesn’t sound very funny coming from a stranger with that accent.

I’d like to finish this blog with clarifying that the north of England doesn’t need pity or to be patronised, and that obviously I’m aware that the south isn’t full of only privileged people. There’s plenty of culture, history and privilege up here, and there’s plenty of poverty down there. But it would be helpful for everyone if individuals started to take more notice of the disparities and the inevitable effects those disparities have on communities. After all, government and institutions will only start to spread the wealth out more, if people (especially those from the side with more) are seen to actively want that to happen.

Economics and equality are complex topics, and there’s no way I can put the world to rights with one blog entry. Nonetheless, I know that there will be many of you reading this who had never considered why a southerner taking the piss out of a northerner might sting a little more. And maybe my northern peers don’t feel irritated by it in the same way I do, but I felt like I needed to say it – especially in the divisive political climate of the last 10 years. I don’t hate London; in fact, I love it because it’s exciting, and the buildings are beautiful, and everything’s there, but then again, why does everything have to only be there?