Here is the article I mentioned in my last posting showing the significant skills separation that is now taking place in England between the north and the south.

Posting this article reminds me of the penultimate BBC TV show "Testing the Nation" in which some league tables of the results of an IQ test in different parts of the country were shown. The average IQ of the large cities in most parts of the country was in the region of 104. Very briefly (and, I think inadvertently) they showed the results from northern towns on the screen. The average IQ of individuals from those those towns (who had taken the test over the Net) was 85! There wasn't a single town with an average IQ over 100 (and these tests were taken by the more intelligent, computer-using individuals, too!). Very interestingly (and very significantly), the City of London University website (which had set and supervised these IQ tests) did not show the results from the northern towns. Plenty of results from cities all over the country and from the smaller towns in the south -- but nothing from the small towns of the north. All this suggests to me a political cover-up of something significant taking place which is as politically incorrect to talk about as the difference between the brain sizes of Africans, Europeans and Asians. Once a separation of this size takes place between the north and the south, then it will take three generations until the IQs of the north and the south become similar again. If, in the meantime, further skill demands and selection takes place, then will the IQ gap become permanent?

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Parts of Britain facing 'skills poverty'

David Turner,

Employment Correspondent

Parts of Britain are facing "catastrophic" levels of "skills poverty", according to a report by a consultancy that advises the government.

Top of the skills poverty league is Birmingham and Solihull, where more than 39 per cent of the working-age population have fewer than four GCSEs at C grade or above or the vocational equivalent. More than a third of the working-age population is stuck below this level in parts of the north-west and the Midlands, but also in County Durham, west Wales and the Valleys, east London and Essex.

The report also finds that low skills is a problem throughout the country. At least a fifth of the potential labour force has a low level of qualifications or none at all in every part of Britain, except for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Scotland, whose education system has often been praised relative to England's, in general scores quite well in the skills league.

Mr Hepworth said "Central London is the engine room of the knowledge economy, with its financial and business services, the civil service and research institutions." Weekly earnings averaged above £600 in five London districts last year - with the City of London top at £913. But the London borough of Havering was at the bottom of the national league, with weekly earnings of £245.

The south and east of England dominate the list of areas showing the highest employment growth in the decade to 2001. Two north-western districts, Barrow-in-Furness and Copeland, showed the fastest decline in employment, at above 10 per cent.

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Financial Times; Jul 24, 2003