The Forgotten Child of the North

It's always confused me, British geography, especially their concepts of "north" and "south". I admit that the US, with its "Mid-west" is a little deceiving, but it's not nearly so bad as Londoners' idea of "the North". (That's how it's marked on the highways: "The North", "The South".)

Look at this map.
For those without a familiarity of British geography, the little circle in the bottom is London. The big section at the top is Scotland. Underneath Scotland is "the North of England". Just under that is "Central North England". The little moon on the Ireland-side of the country is Wales. The little bit touching Wales, Central North England and London is "Central South England". Basically anything touching London is "South".

On this other map, the area called the "Midlands" is highlighted.
This roughly corresponds with the "Central" sections above.

What these two maps have in common is that the line by which everything is North is not halfway up the country. Ok, sure, it's halfway up ENGLAND, but then we are left with Scotland (and Northern Ireland, boy, they must have it rough, being separated by water and all) as being WAY north. Scotland may as well be another country (I know there's debate on this, but please, accept it is part of the UK) for how it's treated by most British (by which I mean English - particularly the government).

People constantly forget about Scotland. Take Liberty, the UK civil liberties group.

Liberty is also known as the National Council for Civil Liberties. Founded in 1934, we are a cross party, non-party membership organisation at the heart of the movement for fundamental rights and freedoms in England and Wales.

In Scotland, we instead have the SACC. You can't even find a Northern Ireland civil liberties-specific group!

The media just brings it home even more. When I first got to the UK, I tried to find a source for local news, both globally and nationally. I always like reading local news, especially the stuff that tells me what's going on around town. I tried the BBC, but their Scotland news sucks. I then switched to the Scotsman Newspaper for my Scottish news and the Independent and Guardian for my UK national news, but neither of those two really mention Scotland very much.

Case in point:

Independent: Is Leeds rubbish war a sign of things to come for Britain? (18 Sept 2009) Regarding the strike by bin men in Leeds.

Scotsman: Bin dispute will be long and dirty struggle (21 Aug 2009) Regarding the strike by bin men in Edinburgh.

"Sign of things to come" my ASS! Pompous twits. Yeah, because the Leeds strike was the first to happen this year in the UK. Uh-huh. Right.