@RickiTarr I live in the Liberty of Tynedale. Okay, that name's a bit silly - the title of Liberty hasn't existed for centuries, it was a medieval system of devolved local government, mostly used for convenience in areas that were problematically far from the King - but I also enjoy the sound of it.
Plus, fun fact: the Liberty of Tynedale was for 150ish years a de facto exclave of Scotland, because the right to govern it on behalf of the King was inherited by a Scottish family, and the English king was too busy to deal with that. I'm going to use that as a claim for Tynedale to join Scotland when the latter becomes independent.
Pros: well, that. Everything here is dripping with history. Castles everywhere, a big chuffing wall just over there, Roman bases for manning that wall, the world's oldest railway lines (my local station is one of the oldest surviving stations that's still in use anywhere), relics of a mighty industrial history, and so on. And the hard edged but caring culture that you get in a land of miners, shipbuilders and hardscrabble farmers, that's very much my culture, it's just the same as where I grew up in North Wales, and I appreciate it a great deal.
Plus, it's beautiful. I don't care what anyone else thinks, I've maintained for many years that Northumberland in all its wildness and roughness is the finest county in England. Our coastline especially is magnificent.
And in my immediate vicinity, housing is comparatively cheap. Prices elsewhere are crazy, but I can rent a nice little house with a garden on a well-below-average salary. There are nice independent shops on the high street. There are lots of woods nearby. And my cheap house comes with a view! A picture of which I've just taken and attached.
Cons: the main con is that it's in Britain, and England more specifically. A country run down in the present case by a truly disastrous government, and over a longer time by being controlled by an obsolete, unmoving and self-serving establishment.
And up here, we do get the sharp end of that. Investment is minimal, public transport is limited (per capita public spending on transport here is 0.5% of London's). There aren't a lot of jobs, and even fewer good jobs. The population is older, poorer and less healthy than the average. Healthy life expectancy is dreadfully low.
Plus inequality is very clear in Northumberland. It has poor, post-industrial places, like where I live. It has wealthy market towns. It has some of the lowest income farmland in England, and it has some enormous country estates and mansions. And again, local government investment goes where it's least needed - the most well-to-do towns get twenty times as much capital investment as my working class town.
But overall, you know, it would be a lot less shit if only we could get rid of the British establishment and governing classes. So much of what is negative is completely unnecessary, solely a product of bad decisions by the uncaring rich. This area has so much going for it but we've been let down for centuries.
RickiTarr