Manchester

Thursday

Aidan Hartley

From Burma — or maybe Saigon — to Manchester via Calcutta

England   We dropped off our daughter Eve at her new school in the Midlands and started the long journey home to Africa. On the train we sat down and my wife Claire looked as if she’d seen a ghost when she saw the elderly lady in the opposite seat. After ten minutes Claire said, ‘I’m sorry I keep staring at you, but you look exactly like my grandmother. Where are you from?’ The woman said she was from Trinidad, but her family was originally from Kerala, in India. Claire said her grandmother was from Calcutta. Our son Rider looked puzzled. ‘Where are we from?’ For him the counties whizzing

Thursday

James Delingpole

Your starter for ten: why do we Brits so love University Challenge?

‘Fingers on buzzers!’ says Jeremy Paxman on University Challenge. But technically this is inaccurate. Only one of the teams actually has buzzers. The other side has push-button bells, instead. I’ve been watching the programme religiously for God knows how many years without ever consciously noticing this. But, once you’ve been told, it’s obvious — in much the same way it’s obvious that the way you tell Thompson and Thomson apart is that one has an upturned moustache and the other doesn’t. Which, come to think of it, would be quite a good University Challenge question. Apparently, one of its main criteria is that every question must have ‘inherent interest’. That

Saturday

Neil Obrien

Could a northern ‘supercity’ rebalance Britain’s economy?

George Osborne is drawing up plans for a northern ‘supercity’, in the hope that it might rival London and rebalance Britain’s economy. Neil O’Brien discussed the idea of a supercity in The Spectator in December 2012, before going off to advise Osborne. My career in politics nearly ended the day it began, when I was almost run over by a gang of Nazis in a Mini-Metro. Not a very butch car to be hit by, I know, and a rather pathetic substitute for a Panzer tank. But it was the early 1990s, and supporters of fascist government in Britain had seen their resources dwindle a bit over the decades. I

Thursday

Sam Neill

Sam Neill’s diary: Back in Blighty, remembering drinking binges of yore

I am back in the UK for work. Great time to turn up — after the grim, grey grind of the British winter. Here in Manchester, people stroll in shirtsleeves or T-shirts, though it’s still only 15 degrees. They are, in truth, dazzlingly white. Their semi-nudity strikes me as a tad premature, but then I’ve only just left my Indian summery vineyard in New Zealand via Bondi Beach. I’m here at the behest of BBC2, for a second season of The Peaky Blinders. If you didn’t see the first season, you should. And if you don’t … I know where you live. And having played Chief Inspector Campbell, I know how

Thursday

Rod Liddle

One Yorkshireman’s commendable bid for freedom

Richard Milburn, a burglar, broke out of Kirkham Prison near Preston because he was sick to the back teeth of the Scousers in the place. And the Mancs. And the Scallies and the La’s (not my apostrophe; I think it’s a local peculiarity). Richard is a Yorkshireman, even if his surname suggests a still better provenance a hundred or so miles north east of there. But given what he was up against Yorkshire will do just fine. This blog has not always been understanding towards the complaints and aspirations of our criminal underclass. But I think I will make an exception for Richard. The Scousers with their hilarious ready wit,

Tuesday

Ed West

Could we move all politicians to Manchester?

The Ukip candidate for Wythenshawe and Sale East has come up with a rather interesting idea: he wants to move the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to Manchester, bringing 700 jobs to the city. I imagine that a lot of Ukip supporters would be quite happy to see the department metaphorically sent to Zurich for an appointment with Dignitas, but it’s a valid point. Why shouldn’t we send more civil servants out of London, where the cost of office space and decent housing is much lower, compared to the capital with its chronic shortage of affordable homes. Lots of countries have separate political and financial centres; Italy has Rome/Milan,

Monday

Alex Massie

To fix the north-south divide, revive the Council of the North!

These, ranked from first to tenth, are the urban areas in Britain with the highest average weekly earnings in 2012: London, Reading, Crawley, Aldershot, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Aberdeen, Southend, Brighton. That’s from the latest, fascinating, report (pdf here) published by the Centre for Cities. It can be summarised easily: if you want to make it, head to London or the south-east of England. Or to Scotland. London, as Jeremy Warner observed this morning, is still driving the British economy. Financial services remain vital both to economic recovery and the country’s long-term future. Strengthening other sectors remains important; so does the City. But strengthening Britain’s other cities is – or should

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Are High Speed Railways for the North or for London?

I used to think High Speed Rail was an excellent idea. Now I’m not so sure. I suspect the economic case for the proposals is weaker than its proponents allow. More importantly, I’m not at all sure the government’s plans for fast trains linking London and Birmingham are the right or most useful possible idea for high-speed rail. Knocking ten minutes off the London to Birmingham route seems like relatively little gain that comes at quite a price. Eventually, of course, the plan is to extend high-speed rail to Lancashire and, perhaps, Yorkshire too. Sometime, one would guess, towards the middle of this century. You can’t accuse modern Britain of

Thursday

Michael Henderson

The Morrissey myth

Drinking in Corbières, a dingy basement bar just off St Ann’s Square, 30 years ago, you could bump into any number of groovy young Mancunians clustered round the jukebox, talking about the bands they were going to form. One night, as the jukey played ‘The Cutter’ by Echo & the Bunnymen, all evening long it seemed, there was talk of an odd duck from Stretford called Steven Morrissey. Nobody knew him but his name was in the wind. Soon he had formed The Smiths with a guitar player, Johnny Marr, whose sweet pop sound complemented, or supplemented, his partner’s predominantly sour words. For three years the collaboration worked, so long

Matthew Adams

‘If I can barely speak, then I shall surely sing’

A few weeks ago, I was wandering with a friend around West London when our conversation turned to the reliable and inexhaustible topic of Morrissey. We were discussing his gestures, in particular when he augments the percussive spondee that opens ‘Sheila Take a Bow’ with two magnificent jabs of his right elbow. So back we went to my friend’s flat to study it again. In goes the DVD; bang go the drums; jab goes the elbow, and my dear friend gives a small cheer of delight, dancing his dance of Rumpelstiltskin glee. ‘Genius!,’ he declares. And he is right. It is a small moment, one of those preposterously arcane details

Friday

Isabel Hardman

The clever councils keeping localism in vogue

One of the problems with localism is that it sounds very grand and clever in opposition, and then turns out to be a nightmare to implement in reality. A minister recently remarked to me rather grumpily recently that ‘all the good people left local government because Labour starved them of responsibility’, and a lack of skills at the top does make it a little more risky to hand powers from Westminster to councils. But there are local authorities who are savvy and brimming with ideas who do want – and deserve – more control over policymaking, such as Manchester. Manchester has caught the eye of Chancellor George Osborne for being

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Conservative conference: Tuesday fringe guide

Every morning throughout party conference season, we’ll be providing our pick of the fringe events on Coffee House. It’s the third day of the annual Tory conference in Manchester and like yesterday, today is jam packed with tens of  fringes with interesting party members, MPs and the like. Here’s the best, ignore the rest: Title Key speaker(s) Time Location Renegotiate and Referendum: How to make the strategy work Tim Loughton, David Lidington, Andrea Leadsom, Mats Persson 08:00 Midland Hotel : Trafford Room Killing the zombies and raising the innovators Andrew Tyrie, Will Hutton 08:15 Manchester Central: Exchange 6 & 7 Internet Matters: Digital policy to accelerate the economy Adam Afriyie

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

A warm welcome to Manchester from the TUC

As it boomed, whistled and shouted its way past Manchester Central this afternoon, the TUC’s Save Our NHS march seemed reasonable enough. If they want to disagree with the Conservatives on key policy issues, then so be it, that’s government for you. But when I decided to watch and photograph what I thought was a peaceful protest, I found that some of the comrades joining in weren’t so keen. A middle-aged man clutching a Socialist Worker grabbed me, demanding to know ‘who are you taking photos for?’. I told him I was taking them for me, and tried to walk away. But then two of his companions joined us. The gang

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Nobody takes a flight from London to Manchester. So why would we take HS2?

From Edinburgh airport there are more than 45 flights a day to London. And, I imagine, the same number back. You can fly from Edinburgh to London Heathrow, -London Gatwick, London Luton, -London Stansted and London City — even to the optimistically named -London Southend. Glasgow offers a similar choice. I have often used these flights. I live about 25 minutes’ drive from Gatwick, so when I go to Edinburgh my -favourite plan is to take a morning train up and then fly or take the sleeper back. Since Manchester is bigger than Edinburgh, I had naively assumed that I would be able to do something similar for an upcoming

Thursday

Tom Rosenthal

At last! The snobbish Tate has finally overcome its distaste for L.S. Lowry

One day in Berlin, I saw the rerun of the RA’s Young British Artists exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin’s equivalent of Tate Modern. After that, I saw a superb retrospective of Lyonel Feininger at the Neue Deutsche Galerie. In the evening, I ran into the onlie begetter of the YBA show (which, with the exception of Ron Mueck’s amazing sculptures, had not given me much pleasure), my (unrelated) namesake Norman. I had no wish to discuss Norman’s pride and joy, the YBA, so turned the conversation to Feininger and asked whether Norman had seen it. ‘Ah,’ said Norman, ‘what a bore; I won’t waste my time on him.’ After

Thursday

Philip Hensher

How do you define a ‘northerner’?

Obviously, now that every high street in England looks identical, and everyone under 30 uses exactly the same Australian rising inflection in speech, books of this sort are based on a false and wishful premise. But let us enter into Paul Morley’s game and ask the question he has asked again. What is ‘the north’ — or ‘the North’ — anyway? Obviously, as a geographical entity, we know (roughly) what we are talking about; we can argue about Derbyshire, but between Yorkshire and Scotland no one is going to dispute what the north is. Culturally, we may think we know what we are talking about, but all attempts to pin

Thursday

Taki

Taking Olympic history to Manchester

To Manchester for an address to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society for the Kilburn Lecture on ‘The Future of the Olympic Games’. The learned society is Britain’s second oldest, after the Royal Society, having been instituted in 1781. John Dalton, the father of modern chemistry, was one of its important past members. My NBF Peter Barnes (I had to explain to him that the acronym meant new best friend) picked me up at the airport and whisked me to Manchester Metropolitan University, and within 45 minutes I had changed into evening clothes and was facing a jolly gathering of bearded professors, smiling ladies and an all-round appreciative audience who

Friday

Alex Massie

Cameron’s Municipal Failure: All Hat and No Cattle

The first-time visitor to Manchester cannot fail to be struck by the grandeur of its Victorian civic buildings. The Town Hall, pictured above, is a mighty declaration of municipal pride and confidence. It is proudly provincial but there is nothing pejoratively provincial about it. Nor is Manchester alone: Newcastle and Leeds and the other great English cities built their own sandstone monuments to themselves. Hold up your heads, citizens, you come from nothing small. Never mind the wins and losses in yesterday’s council elections. These are no more than the usual spins on the political merrygoround. Much more significant and much more depressing is the apparent rejection of locally-elected mayors

Wednesday

Andrew Adonis

Let’s move the Lords to Manchester

Andrew Adonis, one of the policy brains of the Blair government and now seated in the House of Lords, has a letter in tomorrow’s edition of the Spectator responding to Neil O’Brien’s cover article of last week. In it, Adonis suggests one way that the political class could help purge the Londonitis from its collective system: move the House of Lords to Greater Manchester. Here’s the full text of the letter, for CoffeeHousers: Sir, As Neil O’Brien rightly says, London is New York, Washington and LA rolled into one, which is unhealthy for our national politics. So I have a serious suggestion. If the House of Lords is going to

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron devolves the tricky issue of alcohol pricing

Politicians often get nervous around alcohol – and not just because, in these straitened times, a glass of champagne can broadcast the wrong image. No, the real concern is the more basic, fiscal one: how should it be taxed and priced? There’s a difficult trade-off involved. Pushing up the cost of alcohol could halt the staggering advance of binge drinking and all its associated social and medical ills. But, depending on what booze is targeted, it could also hit the least well-off harder than anyone else. And who’s to say whether the effect on drinking habits would be that substantial anyway? The trickiness of the situation was clearly demonstrated by