Life is hard when you are a privately-educated Oxbridge grad from the South East

The only reason the south east is the engine room, is because the north and the midlands has had all of its economic power undermined by successive London governments.

Nothing against Oxbridge or London, but I find these 'check your privilege' types tiresome when they are from London and hold a Cambridge first in classics. Yet because they are the same shade as a white person standing in a shadow, and have a vagina, suddenly they earn the right to soapbox to the privileged types living in council housing in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

The only reason the south east is the engine room, is because the north and the midlands has had all of its economic power undermined by successive London governments.

That's utter nonsense. The southeast has always been the wealthiest part of the country.

How have successive governments undermined the north and the midlands? Specifically, what policies?

That's utter nonsense. The southeast has always been the wealthiest part of the country.

How have successive governments undermined the north and the midlands? Specifically, what policies?

The deindustrialisation of the country under the thatcher government (and this is coming from somebody who really isn't particularly left wing at all). Yes industry still exists here but it's a fraction of what it once was and it put countless people out of work where industry was the major employer.

As a result the bulk of our economic weight is now in London, and as a result we keep reinvesting in London, resulting in a self perpetuating cycle where more and more wealth and jobs become concentrated there, and where business in the rest of the country by and large becomes less and less important.

The end result of this is that you have things like crossrail a project costing £15 billion going ahead in London. Whereas if you take yorkshire which has a comparable population where transport infrastructure is certainly in need of improvement, that amount of money would never get spent there.

Agreed, the problem isn't anything to do with the fact that they're from a wealthy background or that they went to a prestigious university, but that they have the cheek to claim that they're not privileged, that they have the cheek to tell others to check their privilege when odds are she is much more OBJECTIVELY privileged than they are.

I don't like the article, a lot of things in it are wrong and it's written in a vindictive way.
But just because you come from privilege doesn't mean you can't speak for those who don't have the same opportunities. You could argue it's a social responsibility to fight the causes of the less privileged. There's nothing wrong with that.

The deindustrialisation of the country under the thatcher government

True, but I think there's a difference between speaking up for the 'less privileged' and attacking those who you perceive to be privileged.

Yes, and that's where she was wrong. She made incoherent points about white men. She should have made a more general point because I think there is an argument there. My main gripe though, and my reason for posting was the view some people took in this thread- that people from privilege can't speak against it. I think this is completely wrong.