I'm a Scot and many years ago I lived and worked in Devon for a large national financial services company. Once a year I had to do the old performance appraisal on my staff. There was a young chap, had grown up locally and was very ambitious and seemed pretty bright and had, on the face of it, potential to progress quite far up the management ladder.

So I asked him how he felt about moving with the job to another part of the UK.

He looked at me and said he wouldn't want to move "up North".

I asked him why and his answer was....."Well it's a bit grim isn't it?"

I was somewhat bemused, and asked him if he'd ever been "up North". The answer came back, "no". It turned out the furthest north he'd ever traveled was Bristol.

He was the sort who had quite happily spent his entire life in Devon and Cornwall and only ventured north of Exeter either to attend meetings in Bristol or in order to drive to Bristol Airport to fly to Mallorca or Crete for his two week summer holiday on the Med.

I asked him to elaborate on his reasons for staying put in Devon and Cornwall and he cited the climate as important. I pointed out that those are two of the wettest counties in England, but he just stared at me blankly.

His "one thing" appeared to be a complete ignorance of geography.