Division

Towards the end of June, Yorkshire was hit by the worst floods in living memory. Thousands of households were affected and yet... the national media and national politicians were slow to react. It took a full ten days before the BBC Ten O' Clock News gave proper coverage to the awful floods in Hull -which labelled itself with bitter irony, England's "Forgotten City". Our new prime minister - Gordon Brown took twelve days to reach South Yorkshire and Hull to pat rescue workers on their backs and visit some affected dwellings and schools. To give Prince Charles his due - he was round and about offering heartfelt support well ahead of Mr Brown.

And now new floods have hit our island - but this time mainly affecting the southern rivers Severn, Avon, Thames and Great Ouse. And what do you know - surprise, surprise - the film crews and reporters, politicians and journalists are there straightaway! They are standing in waders and wellies - they are "Live" from the scene while Gordon Brown is shown marshalling his cabinet like Winston Churchill in wartime. An objective observer of the media would confirm this clear bias. England remains a divided nation.

You see it in various guises. Look at a quality Sunday magazine - take the restaurant recommendations - invariably they are nearly all down south with perhaps a token northern restaurant thrown in for good measure - to keep accusations of bias at bay. I remember when I was ten or eleven years old, camping with my family in South Wales - I met a boy of similar age who came from London. We were chummy enough for him to ask me one evening at the swings, "Do you have electricity in Yorkshire?" That kind of ignorance about "Up North" abounds in southern England and there are plenty of southerners who have never travelled north of Watford. It's like an old map and in the unexplored northern territory the cartographer has written "There be monsters!"

I am proud to be a northerner. I would loathe living in London with its pretensions and cosmopolitan over-indulgence, its greasy palmed taxi drivers and besuited tube commuters scowling like saints in stained glass windows, its Hooray Henries and "IT" girls, its beggars and blaggers, its Chelsea and Arsenal and pearly furred women clambering out of Bentleys and motor cycle couriers honking. Good heavens - I am shocked to admit that we northerners probably have more in common with the Scots than we do with those southern softies! Come on lads and lasses! To the barricades! Home Rule for Yorkshire!