> the British countryside has some of the poorest areas in western Europe

All rich countries have impovrished areas that have been left behind.

> It is amazing to see how Brits outside of (hell, even in) London live,

The same can be said for California, New York, Florida, Dublin, Paris, Barcelona, etc.

> All rich countries have impovrished areas that have been left behind.

Check which countries make the top 10 lists in QoL. You'll find their ghetto's are as nice to live as some of Britain's good neighbourhoods!

Swiss don't

In The Netherlands they are few and far between.

What parts of the British countryside are poor?

Anecdotally, the stereotypical British farmer is a wealthy Tory, and low income populations are concentrated in council estates in postindustrial northern towns and cities (i.e. not the countryside).

to most non-brits, Britain is effectively divided between "London" and "anything else". This "anything else" can be referenced to, more or less interchangeably, as "the countryside", "Scotland" or (after Game of Thrones) "the North". Manchester is basically a London suburb, Sheffield is just a factory that closed in the '80s, and Birmingham doesn't exist.

Cornwall has some of the worst poverty in Western Europe.

The Welsh Valleys too since the loss of the mines.

From my US PoV, most smallholder farmers in the UK are not rich or wealthy, but almost subsistence --perhaps better than break even but do not generate enough income so one partner has to keep a professional job.

As for post industrial rust-towns, I think of the northeast/Newcastle, Humberside & Scotland --maybe influenced by 'The Post War Dream' and Kris Killip's photography.

Maybe it's a matter of perspective: If you buy a million pound property to live in and keep as a hobby farm that also generates a little bit of income, are you "subsistence" or in fact "very wealthy"?

>> net drain on a country it isn't even strictly part of

Not quite: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_fiscal_balance

London and the City of London are different entities.

good job it's not talking about the city of London, then