I ONCE worked briefly for a top women's magazine in London. It was briefly because after working in newspaper offices where I was trusted to write, design and edit, asking permission to re-write a 'celebrity writer's' copy to make it readable, jarred a bit. The job just wasn't what I expected or wanted.

But it wasn't just that, many of the 'it' girls working on the magazine were intensely irritating too. These birds, none of whom had, in my opinion, proper journalism training in that they'd never had to report court cases or interview the relatives of murder victims, came to work dressed in silk pyjamas. The stationery cupboard was not filled with notebooks and pens, as in your average newspaper office, but tampons and make-up.

But it was their lack of knowledge about the north and its inhabitants that infuriated me most. Only one, out of a possible ten, knew where Manchester was and that's because she had a relative in leafy Cheshire. In three months they never bored of asking me where I lived. It was Buckhurst Hill and the way I pronounced it sent them into peals of laughter. Likewise when I said 'bath' or 'path' or anything with a flat 'a' vowel. It's not as if I speak like the Gallagher brothers, so the attention was undeserved.

I eventually blew one day when one of the fragrant sub-editors, a willowy Chelsea girl who was subbing a piece on dinner parties turned to me and said: "Tell me, Diane, if you have dinner parties up north do you start with prawn cocktail and finish with black forest gateau?" Everyone tittered.

I wanted to slap her one, but that would have been too crudely northern. "Nay lass," came my barbed reply. "We just get ourselves down't chippy for't main course and finish off wi' Instant Whip." I left shortly after.

So, although southerners think equality supremo Harriet Harman has gone off her trolley when she talks of plans to stamp out prejudice against northerners, she's actually spot on.

She wants to introduce rules to prevent membership of the boards of national public bodies being too London or south east-centric, as they are currently. That will mean that hundreds of public organisations - from the Arts Council to the Big Lottery Fund - will be required to have special quotas for Yorkshire men, Geordies or Mancunians whenever a vacancy comes up on their boards.

Naturally the Tories are ridiculing the proposals, saying all appointments must be made on merit, which seems to compound the prejudice that they believe we're not up to the task because if it was merit-based, surely more of us would have been appointed. It's not as if Londoners or south easterners have the monopoly on intelligence or experience.

So is the problem that they (the southerners) think we're not capable to sit on these bodies, which is clearly prejudice, or is it that we don't apply because we believe we don't stand a chance? It's not as if we can't offer up hundreds of good northern candidates who'd be more than happy to make regular trips to London to contribute their learned views for the good of the country.

Of course, in a fair and just world it shouldn't matter where public body members live. But when national bodies are dominated by southerners, how can we ensure that other regions are fairly served if there are no representatives fighting for them?

Yorkshire Tory MP Philip Shipley has denounced the plans as 'equal opportunities gone berserk' and 'patronising to northerners', but I don't agree.

We northerners need more of a voice in the south and if it takes positive discrimination to give us that voice we deserve, then so be it.

Southern jessies - stand aside!