Two views on 'move south' report

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A think-tank report has proved controversial by describing some north of England cities as "beyond revival" and suggesting that residents should move south.

The BBC received thousands of e-mails in response to that Policy Exchange report. Here are two views on the debate, one from the north and one from the south.

ADAM HEPTON, 27, COMPUTER PROGRAMMER, BRADFORD

Adam Hepton says northern towns have genuine community spirit

It's too easy to sneer at Bradford. People who say Bradford is the pits and beyond saving have never been there and if they have, they have never lived there.

I've spent quite a lot of time in Oxford, and beyond the architecture and the academia, it's actually quite soulless.

The main qualities places like Bradford and Sunderland and Liverpool have are the people. The people are warm, friendly, welcoming and there is a sense of community.

People look after each other, we certainly look after visitors. My friend is [originally] from down south and he certainly wouldn't change.

A lot of things that are said about Bradford in the media are negative. The people who make the headlines in Bradford for shooting police and rioting, they are criminals - but there are criminals everywhere.

It's not a spectacular place, we don't have the architecture, but it's an unassuming place. We don't blow our own trumpet, we just are who we are and we are quite proud of who we are actually.

It's not like there's no choice in the matter, and their choice is Bradford Adam Hepton

I would say [the think-tank] would need to take a longer look at these places they are deriding before they make these comments.

If people actually looked at the place, there's opportunity, there's jobs, there's places to live. But people just look for a place to call a northern nowhere.

I think some people want to get out, but I don't think most people do. People I know want to live here and if they didn't they'd move out.

It's not like there's no choice in the matter, and their choice is Bradford.

ADAM HARDY, 29, COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGIST, OXFORD

Adam Hardy says the report's suggestions are simply not feasible

The problem with what they've written is they don't seem to have looked at the feasibility of what they're suggesting.

In Oxford, the city council are trying to keep people away from the city as much as they can. They are trying to preserve the tourist nature of the town.

It is dominated, obviously, by the university buildings, which are very nice, but if you start to have too many people coming in then you start to break down the character.

The roads themselves are not wide enough to cope with more traffic. [During the day] anyone who works in the city, or wants to travel into the city, they basically can't do it unless they use a park 'n' ride.

And once you start going a little bit nearer to London from Oxford, it's getting very built up and if you start building more houses there will be no green space left at all.

On the face of it one may say we are privileged to live in these areas, but on the other hand, it's so expensive to live here. My mortgage is crippling.

This is another report that is written, by the looks of things, by academics who are out of touch with the reality Adam Hardy

From the report they seem to be talking about thousands and thousands of people moving south… Wouldn't it be better to invest in towns up north and improve life up there?

Quite apart from the long-standing arguments of north and south, the reason it all sounds so ludicrous is that the south is so over-populated. It makes far more sense to move in the opposite direction.

This is another report that is written, by the looks of things, by academics who are out of touch with the reality of the situation.

In a nutshell, what I think is that at the moment there seems to be a lot of pressure on the south-east, so it doesn't make sense to move people into the south-east even more.

If anything, it makes sense to spread it around.