This is bad on so many levels. What happens when to all the people who get left outside of London? You end up with ghetto towns full of people on benefit. Then all the people in London have to pay their benefit payments through increased taxes. Meanwhile houseprices in London skyrocket. Wages are forced up even more. London becomes globablly uncompetitive. The whole thing falls to bits.

I think they need to sort the transport links out to solve the problem. Try and get a train from anywhere to London – easy. Try to get a train from A to somewhere that isn’t London and it takes forever! Same goes for flights to anywhere else in Europe/the world – you have to go to London. Until they reconnect the midlands/North to the rest of the England then I see it only getting worse. Everyone is in London because it takes sooo long to get anywhere else!

And on a long term point, talking to colleagues in climate change and in flood risk we really need to be looking at alternatives to London. In a few years (no one is giving figures yet) river taxis may be the norm! Only last night I caught the end of a discussion on the radio where they were touting Manchester as the next capital city.

Personally though I don’t think we will see a major shift like this until the insurance companies take things more seriously.

I grew up inside the M25, then got the hell away from there when I got a job, live in a rural place now. But hate that jobs in future may drag me back that way. Were it not for the wives family an her not wanting to live more than an hour away from them I’d be heading to somewhere nearer hills and the sea I think.

I travel around the country a bit for my job (generally out of the office 1 or 2 days a week as a rule), so it’s useful to be near all the mainline stations. My day to day office work could be done from anywhere though.