WHEN you are on holiday and somebody asks which part of Great Britain you come from do you ever answer: "The North?"

The word 'North' was bandied about a lot in the wake of last week’s Scottish independence referendum. But what does it mean?

On Friday, The Northern Echo, in an unprecedented show of solidarity, partnered with newspapers from Tyneside, Yorkshire and the North West to demand more autonomy for the North. The sentiment was 100 per cent correct. If power and funding is being dished out to parts of the UK then we need to bid for as much as we can get.

I just worry that the word North means wildly different things to different people.

In his 2013 book The North: (And Almost Everything In It) – a 592 page treatise on Northern England's cultural and industrial history - writer Paul Morley devotes more than 50 pages to Stockport, but less than one page to the Stockton to Darlington railway.

Morley doesn’t mention Sunderland or Middlesbrough once. The former NME journalist – who was born in Farnham, Surrey of all places - has carved out a career as an expert on all points North. But his North consists of mill towns, Morrissey and the Manchester Ship Canal, not Teesside steel, George Stephenson and Sting.

I worry that the Government will similarly struggle to see past the North West and West Yorkshire when it dishes out spending powers to the regions.

The biggest infrastructure investment planned outside of London, the HS2 rail project – which ministers say will put the North on the fast-track to economic nirvana – stops at Leeds.

The centrepiece of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement will unveil plans for new money, infrastructure and science to create what George Osborne has called a "Northern powerhouse" to rival London’s economic dominance. Listen carefully to the speech on December 3 to hear how often Mr Osborne mentions the town where you live. I predict he's more likely to pledge funding for marginal constituencies across Lancashire and Cheshire, or even Nick Clegg's Sheffield seat, than to address decades of neglect which mean the roads and railways of the North-East are no more fast-tracks than Morley’s beloved canals.

I live and work in the North-East. It is a place with a rich, distinct history, and a potentially great future. Sharing a voice with Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester might help draw the attention of Whitehall, but once we've caught their eye we need to fight for the North-East and North Yorkshire. Let that place called the North fend for itself.

Follow me on Twitter @bizecho