Confessing Evangelical

This striking map (reminiscent in a way of this famous "New Yorker" cover) is taken from a report in today's Daily Telegraph on the growing North-South divide in the UK, and in particular the growing dominance of London in the South East. As the report puts it:

In London's suburbs are the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, its education enclaves; at its extremities are the beaches of Devon and Cornwall, where many Londoners spend their summer weekends. London's edge suburb is not Croydon, but Bristol.

"Its parks are not in Hampstead, but in Hampshire. Its commuter belt extends to the end of the M3 and M11, to Leamington Spa on the M40, to Chepstow on the M4. The M25 is now its inner ring road.

London's population is booming at the expense of declining Northern towns and cities, as "the young and the educated flood into this metropolis".

'Sfunny, I thought I moved south in 1996 to get married to the woman I love, but it turns out I was just part of a general migration of "skilled young people [moving] in unprecedented numbers towards and into the capital." Just one small datum in a vast statistical trend...