The actuality of the north-south divide and the grim toll of inequality | @guardianletters

‘Because there are wealthy folks in Cheshire and poor people in Kent does not mean there is no measurable variation among people in related situations.’ Photograph: Don McPhee/theguardian.com

Odd to see Owen Jones (The north-south divide is a myth and a distraction, five Might) following Tony Blair in dismissing the actuality of the north-south divide.

Due to the fact there are wealthy folks in Cheshire and poor people in Kent does not indicate there is no measurable distinction among individuals in comparable situations. The 1980 Black report on inequalities in wellness (which the Conservative government tried to bury) showed that the mortality and morbidity charges for folks in the same class and occupation have been much better for individuals in London and the south-east than in other areas.

More than 90% of non-university scientific investigation is spent in the so-named golden triangle among London, Cambridge and Oxford. The government spends twice as a lot on capital and revenue expenditure on transport in London in contrast with Greater Manchester and Merseyside or certainly any of our key regional centres. Astonishingly, 94% of capital expenditure on transport is spent on London. This is unjustifiable and unfair.

I have no disagreement with Owen Jones that electrical power and wealth resides in as well handful of hands and that this is our best issue, but this does not imply we need to pretend that other inequities do not exist. He and John Denham are mistaken attempting to bury this problem, and I and other folks will make confident it stays alive.
Graham Stringer MP
Labour, Blackley and Broughton

• The north-south disparity is undoubtedly not a myth. Appear at regional per-head figures for the government’s capital projects spending, and for arts paying. But calling it a divide perpetuates the erroneous notion that it could be bridged by some link such as HS2. For the north, HS2 will be a substantial waste of funds. Northern railways, and the north in common, definitely need to have £50bn of investment – but not on a single line that will just make it less difficult to run almost everything everywhere from London headquarters.
Brian Hatton
London

• While pleased to see you give front-page area (three May) to Britain’s poor functionality in stopping deaths amid children underneath five, and that inequality was mentioned in passing, we had been disappointed that both the report and the accompanying examination focused on poverty and deprivation as explanations. As lengthy in the past as 1992, study showed that even for households in the extremely leading social class, babies had been more probably to die in infancy in England and Wales than in far more equal Sweden. Individuals deaths have little to do with poverty, deprivation or access to medical care.

Inequality damages health across the social spectrum because of its psychosocial influence. The lately published little one mortality figures are drastically correlated with income inequality in wealthy, developed nations.

Investigation continues to demonstrate that in a far more unequal society we are all, even at the best of the social ladder, affected by higher ranges of stress and status anxiety. We must steer clear of conflating the results of materials poverty with individuals of inequality – the two are undesirable for population health but they need different answers.
Kate Pickett Professor of epidemiology, University of York
Nigel Simpson Senior lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology, University of Leeds
Richard Wilkinson Emeritus professor of social epidemiology, University of York

The actuality of the north-south divide and the grim toll of inequality | @guardianletters