There's a cope northerners adopt when they move down south which is to shit talk their old home counties to make their present hell more tolerable, so a lot of southerners picture the north as one huge ex-mining town full of illiterate dole-bums.
Whereas in fact it comprises
many different ex-mining towns full of illiterate dole-bums. There are also ex-steel towns (Sheffield, Redcar, soon to be Scunthorpe as well), ex-ports (Ellesmere, Hull, Grimsby*), decaying seaside resorts obliterated by cheap flights letting the proles go somewhere actually warm on holiday (Morcambe, Scarborough, Skegness, Blackpool, Filey**) and places that seem to serve no clear purpose at all (Preston, Skipton, Ormskirk). They're all full of illiterate dole-bums, though.
*A friend of mine moved to Grimsby for some sort of work reason and rented a flat above a takeaway. On her first night in the flat a customer in said takeaway beat another customer to death with a hammer.
**I stopped off in Filey, alleged seaside resort, one day in April during a long business trip and attempted to obtain fish and chips. Not only was there not a single place serving fish and chips in an alleged seaside town in late Spring, when I asked a local shopkeeper where I could get some he looked at me like I'd asked him to source unicorn semen. Maybe there's no fish and chips because they're in the same fish-man cult as the Innsmouth lot. Certainly looks that way. East Yorkshire is a really, really weird place.
You are right that the North and the South snap at each other to make themselves feel better about their part of the world. They're both shite. If you live up North, you can't afford anything because you're poor. If you live down South, you can't afford anything because a beer costs more than a Bugatti. You could probably rent an aircraft carrier for less than a 2-bed flat in Zone 2.
Have you thought of doing a write up on children's entertainment?
Beano, Dandy, Enid Blyton, etc?
I've not got time to do the megaposts these days. Also I'm not sure how Americans would react to Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine or Button Moon. You guys might like Dangermouse though, the original is fucking rad (the reboot is shit, great cast but weak scripts and utterly dogshit animation that looks worse than the 40-year-old original.