Campaigning for our NHS in Hazel Grove. Against TTIP and...

Campaigning for our NHS in Hazel Grove. Against TTIP and creeping privatisation.

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These figures show George Osborne has broken his promise to balance the books by this year and national debt is still rising - Chris Leslie

These figures show George Osborne has broken his promise to balance the books by this year and national debt is still rising - Chris Leslie:

labourpress:

Chris Leslie MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, responding to today’s public sector finance figures, said:

“These figures show George Osborne has broken his promise to balance the books by this year and national debt is still rising.

“His failure on the deficit is because…

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Final chance for Government to ensure fracking regime is safe and sustainable – Flint and Greatrex

Final chance for Government to ensure fracking regime is safe and sustainable – Flint and Greatrex:

labourpress:

Labour has tabled an amendment to prevent fracking in the UK unless 13 outstanding loopholes in the regulation are closed. Labour first set out its conditions for fracking to take place in March 2012, but the Government has repeatedly sidelined genuine and legitimate concerns, ignoring gaps in the…

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Manchester's next generation of leaders

We had a Downtown Leaders Lunch today. It’s part of a series of lunches where we ask leaders from the city to speak - that’s why there’s no apostrophe, my grammar pedant friends.
The speaker was billed as Sir Howard Bernstein, the chief executive of the city council, but he was unwell. He sent Sara Tomkins instead. Once I’d got over the disappointment and concern over Howard, I must admit I was really quite pleased. Not that Howard was ill - but that we can expose another civic leader to the very people who are drawn to the magnetism of Howard.
I wish I had a pound for every time I get told that Manchester would be lost without Sir Howard and Sir Richard Leese, the council leader. The theory goes that there is a talent vacuum beyond the two knights, and that their eventual retirement will expose a chasm. In a sense they are a remarkable double act, but I have hopefully seen enough to recognise that there’s something else going on.
It’s actually one of the mightiest forces of their leadership that they lead from the front. But also that they lead and inspire the small army of policy creators, delivery teams and political campaigners.
Sara is one of those. As the assistant chief executive for communications, customer and IT, her brief covers some crucial aspects of the council’s work. She spoke about the leadership of the local authority today - how a municipal culture of hard pragmatic politics (and Politics) encourages younger executives and officers to take risks and be innovative.
She also didn’t shy away from issuing a few challenges - property developers and planners need to think much, much more about the kind of digital infrastructure their buildings need. She also faced up to some tough questions over broadband vouchers, disruption caused by the Second City Crossing and traffic congestion.
I think everyone at the Grill on New York Street this lunchtime will have enjoyed what she had to say - they will have also left a little more confident that there are a generation of articulate younger leaders around with the right levels of intelligence and pragmatism to lead the city in the future.

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What is the point of the Manchester Evening News?

I’ve sat in meetings with regional media executives thinking I’ve missed a trick. Being fair minded I sat there listening patiently to bold new strategies, to taps on the nose about hidden revenue streams they had discovered and thought they must know something I don’t. Over the years these have involved going free, getting into TV and sticking bits behind a paywall.
They’ve all come and gone and I have, occasionally, doubted my core view that the whole regional newspaper industry is sliding towards total oblivion.
The announcement this week that the Liverpool Daily Post is to close is just one more nail in the coffin of an industry in its death throes. These strategies are just dreams, whims and last gasps.
So let’s take this opportunity to take stock of the Manchester Evening News, also owned by Trinity Mirror and run by the same management team responsible for closing the Post. Now based in Oldham, the MEN reads and feels like a tabloid paper in a city region that does a decent job of reporting big crime stories, Metrolink problems and Premiership football. Beyond that, what else?
Really, go on, ask yourself if you can remember an MEN splash that wasn’t one of those stories?
Two days of the week it is handed out free (pic, above). Its very name is a triage of misnomers – it is neither Manchester, Evening, nor News. Such is the pace of which hard news is broken through web and social channels, not to mention through radio.
Circulation is heading downwards, as it is with all print titles.
Analysts of these trends tend to focus on the decline in the quality of the journalism and the supposed correlation with copy sales. Many will also evoke the take up of social media as evidence for public disengagement.
The real decline however is in advertising. That was the foundation upon which everything else was built. Advertising paid for the court reporters, the political editors, the punchy columnists and investigations. The layers of rock of newspaper advertising were jobs, homes, motors and classified. At each turn these have been cracked apart by more Internet disrupters – Monster, Right Move, AutoTrader and the all conquering eBay.
As I know very well, there is a small reservoir of business to business advertising, but it is barely enough for the MEN to sustain even its GM Business Week magazine, usually to be seen in unopened bundles in receptions in Spinningfields.
Any media property is at the core of a community. It provides a relevant platform for advertisers, attracted by an attentive set of readers. It also dominates the conversations people are having around that pivot. That has long gone in Manchester and in other cities around the world. What all regional papers are doing now is flailing around looking for a purpose. Good luck to them, but it looks like the game is up.

Should you check your email? Brilliant.

Should you check your email? This brilliant (and tragicomically true) illustrated flowchart by Wendy MacNaughton is now officially one of the best infographics of the year.

Manchester - time to stop bitching. Time to embrace REAL collaboration.

At our SmartCity event last week there were loads of great ideas to lift our city. Plenty of passion and a real burst of energy. This wasn’t just on the things you’d expect from a business network, but on subjects like food production, waste disposal, street lighting and money.
We also talked about London quite a lot. Manchester’s relationship with the capital is always a slightly thorny one. To be honest, I’m always happier not to. I’d rather talk about Manchester.
As the Tory magazine editor Fraser Nelson said in the Daily Telegraph last week – “Manchester does not behave like it wants to be Britain’s second city: it behaves like it wants to be the first.”
I like it that he says that and I like it because it’s at least partly true. But I actually wish it I wish it were really true.
Since June last year and my life changing visit to Silicon Valley in March, I have been determined to embrace the spirit of partnership and collaboration and help to join up the dots.
There is so much to co-operate on, so many opportunities in the city to do things for the betterment of the city. To simply focus on a narrow short term interest does no-one any favours. It just reinforces the image of the great cities of the North as parochial fiefdoms.
We have introduced businesses to new opportunities, opened the door to politicians of all colours and recommended companies to one another. It’s what we do and is all part of a wider mission to be a more grown-up city.
Yet I have been properly depressed at times to find myself on the other side of a fault line, drifting away from people I genuinely want to work with and share ideas with, but who have fallen back on supposed enmities and rivalries to the exclusion of, well, me. I genuinely thought I’d left that all behind in 1983 when I left school.
I’ve also been caught in the crossfire on some nasty personal battles that really should be beneath those involved.
We all have a duty to our businesses to succeed in a competitive environment. I get that. But what I don’t get is the nastiness. It’s just not necessary and it narrows your horizons.
So, here are the questions I’d like you to ponder.
Do the media do justice to the conversations that take place around the city – the initiatives that require backing, not just the ones they are media partners on?
Do the Universities really want to open their doors to the people of Manchester and share knowledge and expertise – and even to work with one another?
And is there a willingness amongst technology businesses of what they might require from an active financial and professional community, rather than just a slightly grumpy complaint they don’t understand the sector?
I’d like to think the answers to all of the above are “yes”. But I suspect, if we’re honest, they are “no”. I’d like to change all of that. Do you want to work with me?

Manchester's Graphene opportunity - an essential SmartCity goal

Manchester's Graphene opportunity - an essential SmartCity goal :

So what’s the truth about Graphene?

It will soon be a decade since two scientists discovered wonder product Graphene at the University of Manchester. For our city and for the University the work that those two eminent scientists have been doing remains vital to giving the city a critical edge.

Indeed, at our SmartCity conference on the 13^th of November at MOSI we will be hearing from Mike Emmerich, the chief executive of New Economy Manchester about these developments in Graphene and how the city will benefit in the future.

But a common view expressed is that Manchester’s opportunity has gone. That this is now an opportunity likely to be exploited by America and Asia, not Northern Europe. The evidence for this lies in the number of Chinese, Korean and US patents being registered, as well as the daily production of research papers all over the word.

In an article in The Manufacturer, Dr Helen Meese, head of materials at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, says:“The UK is at the very forefront of graphene research, but academics are increasingly concerned that little is being done to encourage industry to develop practical uses. This must change.”

She says over 7,500 graphene-based patents had been filed worldwide by the beginning of this year but only 54 were from the UK. In comparison, over 2,200 are held by China and 1,754 by South Korea. The Korean company Samsung alone hold 407 graphene-based patents.

It’s a point reiterated by a research report from the Patent Office.

But the view from Manchester is that this doom and gloom can be overplayed. The building of the Graphene Institute is evidence of a serious research facility and the appointment Nathan Hill from Oxford Instruments is a sign of series intent as is a new prize for scientific work on commercialization.

Nathan Hill’s goal is to set up a graphene Industry Club and a number of strategic partnerships with major companies and the University.

His view is: “Having lived through the development cycle of superconductor and semiconductor materials and devices, working with the great team and resources at Manchester was too good an opportunity to miss. I’m very much looking forward to supporting the next stage of making graphene a powerhouse for further research, manufacturing and jobs in Manchester”.

I’m ever the optimist, the stakes may be sky high, but hopefully there is more going on than many realise and that Manchester’s role in the future of this wonder material is bright.

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Why Russell Brand is a little bit right about globalization and politics, but why he is still wrong about pretty much everything else

Florid, flirtatious and fun. But also angry. Russell Brand has this week been elevated to some kind of spokesman for a generation. He guest edited the left-wing current affairs magazine the New Statesman and contributed a long essay about the importance of changing the way we think.
His entertaining interview with a glum and not very serious Jeremy Paxman (above) showed this to more people, via YouTube, than had ever even heard of the New Statesman.
It’s easy to pick holes in his comfortable pontificating from his mansion in LA, and to pick up on everything stupid thing he ever did, as this guy does here. but he has a point. And he may have hit a nerve.
I’m with Simon Kelner in the Independent when he said this: “His call for revolution may be Spartist nonsense, but Brand definitely articulates a strain of thinking among a growing number of young people who feel disenfranchised, disenchanted, disengaged and, most important, disinterested in the idea that politics can change the world.”
A session I went to at the University of Manchester this week saw four white men in suits presenting policy ideas from their respective think tanks. Yet it only really ignited when a member of the audience evoked the spirit of Rusty and asked if he was on to something or was insane. And this was in a room full of people who WANT to talk about policy and politics and all the things that are supposed to be so boring.
So what do we do? How do we engage and entertain and make relevant the things we seek to do?
The first is that we must seek out interesting people with creative solutions to difficult problems. How they talk, how they think and yes, how they look. People like Al Mackin, holder of our Tony Award, who has recently been to Tel Aviv and has a few things to say about what he found. People like Vincent Walsh who is rethinking our whole approach to food production in the city of the future.
Have I got your attention? Anyway, all this and more is on offer at our SmartCity event on the 13^th of November.
You see, I don’t think we need a revolution in this country. I don’t think the system is fixed against everyone. I think there are plenty of revolutionary opportunities to make change and do things better and with more fun.

Vikas Shah – Renaissance Man

I presented the Chairman’s Award at the 2013 Mancoolian Awards. It went to Vikas Shah, someone who I’ve got to know over the course of the last year or two.

Vikas is one of those people in business in Manchester who makes things just that little bit more interesting. Though he works in his family business Swiscot, a textiles company, what makes him interesting is the range of different things he does.

He’s been involved in setting up the Greater Manchester Film Festival, has produced a couple of films, he supports a number of different entrepreneurs – many of them with the aim to pushing the agenda of Manchester and making it a great city to do business in.

One of the first things about him that caught my eye was his blog – Thought Economics. It will never win any wards for design but for content it is quite something. Over the course of the last few years Vikas has managed to interview some of the leading thinkers and influencers on the planet., including Nobel Prize winners, business leaders and people who are changing the world through incredible work in Africa and Asia. And then there’s Sir Richard Branson. We may disagree slightly on the bearded one, but Vikas still landed a good interview.

His work with a business school in Portugal and with Manchester Business School reminds us of the need to give in order to get. He has found new opportunities through working with entrepreneurs and start-ups that need that injection of energy, ides and inspiration.

What Vikas reminded me of was the whole essence of the Renaissance Man – the multi-faceted, intellectually curious and enigmatic risk taker. Sometimes people who don’t fit the profile of the straight laced corporate man attract suspicion, rather than admiration. As entrepreneur Luke Johnson says in his book Start It Up – “Centuries ago there were no sharp divisions between state and the private sector, between science and the art. Bring back that enlightened approach!”

To me it represents something important about Manchester as well. Successful Mancunians have always had that streak of curiosity and daring about them. It was therefore an absolute delight to present Vikas with that award and to mark his move into such exalted company.



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Let's have the emotional and excitable case for HS2, please

It’s tempting to say we’d like to see a grown-up, mature and evidence-based case made for High Speed Rail, but to be honest I’d also like to see a quirky, excitable and emotional debate too.



I was at a special event with the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin on Tuesday evening. There he was presented with a well argued case for HS2 from an august group of business leaders from around the North West, notably Jurgen Maier of Siemens, the current chairman of the North West Business Leadership Team. And not for McLaughlin the coded messages about blank cheques transmitted a week earlier by Ed Balls. No, the Tories are determined that HS2 will happen and that the whole country will benefit from a well delivered project.

The case for HS2 has been rather meekly made so far. I speak to many businesses and the biggest gripe is that they fail to see the relevance of a long term project that will get you to London quicker, this from Lawrence Jones of UK Fast is typical: “We don’t need to get to London quicker. It’s a waste of money when we don’t have enough to go around, and it’s not all about London, which already gets the lion’s share of all our taxes.”

Then the argument about capacity on the West Coast main line seems to get confused with how many empty seats there are in First Class during off peak periods. So when Labour’s Andy Burnham met a few of us recently he was slightly taken aback by the lack of enthusiasm for HS2 and the weakening of the supposed cross party consensus.
People also feel that budgets in their billions sound like an awful lot of money. It is a lot of money. But it is still a modestly small proportion of the rail budget if you take a long term view and measure it against all the other transport plans.
And after the dripping of negativity from Ed Balls at Labour conference, it must have been encouraging for city council leaders like Sir Richard Leese in Manchester to see beyond party politics and welcome a Conservative government supporting a project he feels passionately about, because he feels it will benefit Manchester.
Richard has acknowledged too that he’s been criticised in his own party for sharing platforms with Tory ministers: “Today I shared a platform with the Secretary of State for Transport and had no problem whatsoever. We were talking about HS2, something I passionately believe in, and something that like all long-term infrastructure programmes needs cross-party consensus to deliver. Sometimes it’s more difficult but at the end of the day they are the party of government. Every day they make decisions that impact on this city and its citizens. My job involves standing up for Manchester and that means I should take every opportunity to argue Manchester’s case with the decision makers in Whitehall.”
That’s why I want a bit of vision and passion in the debate too. I like trains. I like new technology and I get excited about dramatic advances in how we live. I like a bit of vision and bold thinking. Indeed it was heartening to hear George Osborne evoke the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the greatest of British engineers.
So in making the case for HS2 it has been important to hear how it cost £10bn to improve the current main line. As prime minister David Cameron said at his conference, why settle for less than the best if improvements are needed anyway?
“The fact is this: the West Coast Mainline is almost full. We have to build a new railway and the choice is between another old style Victorian one or a high speed one. Just imagine if someone had said no, you can’t build the M1 or the Severn Bridge, imagine how that would be hobbling our economy today.
“HS2 is about bringing the north and the south together in the national endeavour. Because think how much more we could do with the pistons firing in all parts of our economy.”
But there’s the rub, if this is a North-South thing, then why not build it from here first? I also share the frustration that the consultation and then the timetable for delivering HS2 is “painfully slow”. Patrick McLoughlin revealed to us on Tuesday that the new chairman of HS2, Sir David Higgins, is keen to quicken the pace too.
As the Birmingham to Manchester dimension is in open consultation at the moment I believe it’s important to make the case for building it sooner and to start the work in Manchester, particularly linking the city centre to the Airport.
I commend the report from the North West Business Leadership Team, which can be downloaded here. The main point is that HS2 has to be part of a range of measures that tackle problems in how road, rail and air transport functions effectively. It requires a fresh way of looking at the economy of the country, it requires a shift in thinking about how we view the country, it requires, as we’ve been saying for a while, a Northern Revolution.

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Labour isn’t the party of small business just because it says it is so

Peter Mandelson defined New Labour’s relationship with the City and big business by stating that he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. It set the mood music for the boom years of the last decade. Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown enjoyed a reasonably good relationship with big business up to, but probably not including, the financial crash of 2008.

But business relations have soured. Both on economic management and red tape, the Tories have secured the high ground. Not a single FTSE 250 chief executive backed Labour at the last election.

Days before Labour’s conference this week Downtown brought a couple of dozen members together for an audience with front bench heavyweight Andy Burnham MP at Manchester Science Park (pictured above, with Rowena Burns from MSP). One of the points I put towards him was the shift going on our cities and business parks and Labour’s need to engage better with businesses beyond the square mile of the City of London.

The demographic of Britain is changing. The last couple of years has seen record levels of new company formations and new businesses. According to the Start-Up Britain Tracker 382,792 new businesses have been started this year. That enormous figure may mask a multitude of different stories – it includes one-man bands, sole traders, kitchen table eBay traders, shell companies as well as a fully fledged companies with dreams of world domination.

What they all represent is that thread of aspiration through British society. A desire to get on, improve one’s lot and make money.

I wanted to know if there was room for any of that in Andy Burnham’s radical ‘aspirational socialism’ agenda which underpinned his earlier leadership bid. We have been comfortable so far with the soundings we have had with Lord Adonis as he embarks upon his Growth Review.

Too often, Labour’s left leaning rhetoric has betrayed a lack of trust and empathy with the wealth creating classes, focusing firmly on taxes, fat cats and if you close your eyes and listen to Ed Balls spit the word out – “millionaires”.

Many of the 382, 792 will not become the “millionaires” that Ed Balls thinks were undeserving of a tax cut from 50 per cent to 45 per cent once they earned £150,000 a year. But they’re not stupid either. They hear that and think – he’s going to come after me once I make a bit of money for myself. They might not pack it in, but they’ll switch off when Labour come calling.

Ed Miliband was at least right in his instincts this week when he identified an opportunity to make a Labour pitch to be the party of small business. Small companies are often the forgotten and downtrodden underdog in a supply chain, the victims of cartels and stitch ups, shut out from the closed shops of procurement processes by bureaucracy and a high bar for admission to government frameworks.

A policy to cut business rates was a step in the right direction. So too is Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna’s imaginative lifting of the Small Business Saturday project from America, but there is still a great deal more work to be done to convince anyone in a business that the state is on their side, whatever the party.

Take what Chuka Umunna told the Daily Telegraph this week: “We want to celebrate companies that have good business models, which promote long-term sustainable value creation, who value their people and see business as part of society. During our time in government, we weren’t always discerning about the kinds of business models and practices we want to see.”

I’d like to know this: Where is Labour placing the tidemark on these models? No, OK, putting kids up chimneys is off, but cold calling? Lending money? Private healthcare? Entrepreneurial people tend to spot opportunities better than government. They should be supported when they do so. That support should be unconditional, otherwise the aspiration isn’t to support small business at all, just to support cool people we like, and the rest of you can just pay your tax and shut up.

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Lessons in life from Lloyd Dorfman

Lloyd Dorfman was in town this week. He is chairman of Travelex, the people you probably change your money with when you go on holiday.

I had the honour of interviewing him at an event for The Prince's Trust. He’s a class act, a proper gent and he has an incredible grasp of detail. I wanted to get from him some inspirational stories, some anecdotes about his life, why he is such a generous supporter of the arts and of charities like The Prince's Trust and what has driven him through his life.

He started his business in the toughest of economic times. In 1976 the odds were stacked against him when he founded the company as Bureau de Change from a single shop in London and now trades more than 80 currencies in more than 50 countries.

As he built the business up, he had to fight to get into locations like Heathrow Airport. He battled the vested interests of banks and dominant players. When the opportunity came along to bid for Thomas Cook’s financial services arm, Travelex was prevented from even entering the ring. He bet the whole business on sealing that deal, but it proved transformational and projected the business to a global stage. When he eventually took cash out of the business, selling to Apax, he stayed involved, keeping a 30 per cent stake and retaining his role as chairman. Not executive chairman, not non-executive chairman, just chairman.

I didn’t pick up on this until later but so many of his stories weren’t just about the obstacles that he’d overcome, but how a relationship with a real person turned it - the official at BAA, the Thomas Cook shareholder who ushered him into the auction which led to him buying it. His relationship with his CEO Peter Jackson.

I thought to myself, even a man who operates at the very top of life thrives on such basic raw connections. It starts to emphasise something we can all too often forget: people sell people and people don’t buy from you if they don’t like you.

More than ever this is a connected economy. We are frequently reminded of this, but I firmly believe this firm human contact is more important now than it ever was. The foundation of businesses like LinkedIn warehouse your network and treat your contacts like a commodity, but you always run the risk that you miss out on what is important to any individual.

So, there you go. Spending time with one of the most successful businessmen of his generation teaches you the most important lesson in life. Don’t be horrible.

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Summer reading tips - a few books to get through

I love the summer holidays for catching up on topical reading, it’s a good time to open your mind to fresh ideas, escape with a story or just learn something new about our wonderful world. Apart from Lake Coniston, here’s what I’ll be diving into.

‘The Cotton Harvest’ by AK Nawaz I love urban crime noir. My favourite of this genre is James Crumley who set his grimy tales in Missoula, Montana. Having never been there I can’t properly say whether he’s done a good portrayal or not. Anyway, I know who AK Nawaz is (this isn’t his real name) but he should be able to get a decent grip on Manchester crime.

‘The Killing Pool’ by Kevin Sampson, set in Liverpool, Sampson has a good ear and a ready feel for all walks of life. His Awaydays was superb and this looks the business as well.

'The Atmospheric Railway and other stories' by Shena Mackay - I first read a collection by this quite brilliant English writer when I backpacked around Turkey in 1986. I'm looking forward to this collection after picking it up at a church sale last month. 

Welcome to Entrepreneur Country by Julie Meyer So far this has been an easy to read, but hard to swallow business book for a holiday. I like the crazy utopianism of Julie’s world view, which she advanced so elegantly at a Downtown and TechHub event earlier this month.

The Last Days of Detroit by Mark Binelli – Anyone involved in city politics and urban development looks at Detroit with horror. In fact, everyone looks at Detroit with horror, except the tourists who come to photograph urban decay and say they’ve come to see what the end of the world will look like. The former Motor City has recently gone bankrupt. Now I’ve had this for a while and have been dipping into it, but it’s a well argued, well researched examination of what went wrong and how it can bounce back.

‘The Quarry’ by Iain Banks – the last book by the recently departed Scottish author. I have really enjoyed The Crow Road and The Business and love the premise of this one, a group of university friends gathering together years later. Also touches on themes like parental mortality and autism, personal interests of mine.

‘Northern Monkeys’ by William Routledge – OK, I have a vested interest in this compelling anthology of quality musings on fashion, football and frolics through the years, but it’s still a great book to discover new insights and nuances. A wonderful reference and a work of beauty.

Five Days in May by Andrew Adonis - Having spent a bit of time with Andrew Adonis this year I have been impressed at his determination to get economic policy right for Labour, but also to work across party lines to articulate projects in the national interest – like HS2, Academies, promotion of LEPs and apprenticeships. This is his insider’s account of the birth of the Coalition government.

That should get me through the first week, any other suggestions gratefully received.

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Somewhere beginning with M - Manchester - Melbourne connections

Melbourne Australia: World’s most liveable city (by InvestVictoria)
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Something beginning with M - the Manchester Melbourne connection

I only lived in Melbourne, Australia, very briefly, but it’s a city I admire greatly. And it’s a city that Manchester has much to learn from and both cities have much knowledge to share.

There’s a love or sport, music and clubbing. Both are cities with proud traditions of welcoming immigrants – Melbourne has the second largest Greek population after Athens and yet still has more Italians than Greeks. All of this has been flooding back recently as I’ve finally got round to reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, I know, the book everyone had their head in two years ago. But it’s set in Melbourne, and has provided something of a tour of this ethnic, cultural and sometimes tense melting pot.

Mancunians also share a certain chippines about the main city in our country. Sydneysiders have a swagger and an arrogance and think their city is the first and last place of importance in the country. Sound familiar?

So I was delighted to read in Monocle magazine that Melbourne was named the second most livable city on the planet this year, tucked in behind Copenhagen.

The factors that fell in Melbourne’s favour included a strong economic performance – noting positive jobs growth, regional infrastructure developments, but also improvements in cycling and public transport.

I like the Monocle annual quality of life index because it picks up things that other surveys ignore, but are integral to the happiness of creative and urbane people who value things like shopping hours and amount of outdoor public seating.

As the capital city of the state of Victoria, Melbourne has the feel of a confident and progressive city. It is more industrial and mercantile too, innovative and attractive to international companies. KPMG research found it to be the best city in the world to carry out commercial scientific research, thanks to a generous tax regime.

The state government will give back 45 cents in every dollar spent by start-up businesses with turnover under A$20m, but it’s not just the system, but the ease with which it is implemented. How often do you hear the complaint that UK tax rules are so complicated businesses just don’t bother applying?

But I also return to the issue of autonomy. By targeting research and development, and making some adjustments to its tax policy, the state has been able to make this commitment. We indeed have much to learn and share.

I say all of this, because I’m meeting with a cross-party group of MPs from the Victorian State Parliament next week. They are coming to Manchester to find out about how this city has achieved so much. The public private partnerships here are admired around the world. So it’s particularly flattering that a city like Melbourne has much to learn from Manchester. But I shall very much enjoy the interchange of insights and look forward to sharing them with Downtown members too.

I am currently holding my breath as to whether cricket will be a topic for discussion.

We have to get a move on – or HS2 will bring our talent closer to London

Imagine a scenario when High Speed Rail gets built. That the cities of the North have still lagged behind. That Scotland has a generous corporation tax regime that draws in ambitious technology businesses to Glasgow and to Silicon Glen. And that London continues its inexorable rise as a global powerhouse.

A new train line that can take people from Manchester to the centre of London, to a newly built Euston station (pictured), in just over an hour, does just that. It draws people in. Just that. There is no reason for the traffic to be two ways – few other meaningful businesses have followed the BBC to MediaCity and the public sector is still the biggest employer in large swathes of the North.

It simply can’t happen. It simply can’t be allowed to happen. And if we needed any further impetus to get political leaders in the cities to dig in for greater autonomy and power to have serious control over government budgets in an effective way for our urban economies, then this is it.

Geoff Muirhead, the former CEO of Manchester Airports Group made these points and more at our Northern Revolution conference yesterday.

This is the one that sharpens our senses though. If you accept the arguments that HS2 is going to happen, then we recognise it presents a challenge to the North as much as it does an opportunity. The prize is double edged – just relying on it and becoming a far flung suburb of London would be a disaster. It has to be more than that.

Any successful city has to create its own magnetism – a reason to draw people in, retain the talented and mobile, and provide a living and a quality of life for its people. And that’s the challenge of all of us.

Mike Emmerich, chief executive of new economy, an articulate and wise servant of the city who has experience of working in Whitehall, made the good point that public and economic policy needs to work on what is organically there. Otherwise it will fail. There is plenty of evidence of that all around us of abandoned schemes to dream a shiny new building into a rundown town and hope the investment will follow. It’s harder than that. It’s about economic performance, people then place. In that order.

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MOSI - a cautious welcome

Downtown Manchester in Business offers a cautious welcome to the announcement today from Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, over the future of MOSI.

However, the very fact that the future of this fine Manchester asset has been called into question is unacceptable.

Businesses in the city have been galvanised into action to protect MOSI, but also wish to partner with the board and trustees to ensure that the financial future of MOSI is guaranteed for future generations.

I hope that a new spirit of partnership can grow from this period of confusion and turbulence.

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Scotland the braver – the North of England’s noisy neighbour

I was up in Glasgow this week for Scotland’s Technology Show. It was an exhibition of a wide range of technology companies and featured a large presence from Scottish Enterprise, of which there is no equivalent in England, or in our Northern cities. And on the back of BBC’s Question Time from Edinburgh last night, I came away with 5 thoughts that have shifted my view of our Caledonian cousins.

Maybe it’s because I’m a political anorak, but I kept musing about what difference an independent Scotland would make to this event in the future, and to the business owners I met up there. I’ll be honest with you, I just don’t get Scottish nationalism. I thought any ambitions of a new independent nation joining the “arc of prosperity” from Norway to Iceland and Ireland would have been buried in the rubble of the financial crisis of 2008. The rhetoric of the SNP is also of a bygone era of high state spending with no real understanding of the kind of dynamic economy an independent Scotland will need to be. Plus, most of the oil is in English waters if you draw the line correctly.

Yet there is still a momentum behind this most implausible of political projects, one that will grow stronger as the gap between London and the other regional cities grows larger. I am pretty sure that full independence will be bad for Scotland, even though I’m not really entitled or required to have a view on that. But I’m still not sure as to whether it will be good for the North of England, or not.

What I am sure of, however, is that the institutions that Scotland has are making a better job than I previously thought of creating the kind of economy that it needs, whether a devolved part of the UK, or a small independent member of the European Union.

As we prepare for the Northern Revolution conference in Salford Quays, on the 4^th of July it’s as well to learn from other places where policy and planning are working.

Here are five things I learned this week that show Scotland is heading in the right direction. And maybe Northern cities, or a collaboration between them, could study a bit closer.

1. The Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) – I like how the umbrella body of SIB operates a suite of investment funds. It provides clarity, a relatively lean and no nonsense model and does co-investment with a well established network of business angels through both the three equity funds and is also the lead investor in the privately managed Scottish Loan Fund.

2. Scotland’s Technology Show – the spirit of co-operation and excitement amongst disparate companies in Scotland to show off their products at a domestic trade show was impressive. It wasn’t to meet buyers of subsea marine engineering products, but it was to share ideas and meet other technology companies with similar ambitions.

3. There are more entrepreneurs in Scotland than ever – this was a trend that surprised me, but beyond the headlines, start-up rates are still way behind the rest of the UK. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Scotland is retaining start-ups and has a high proportion of people of working age who have started a business. Sir Tom Hunter, who endowed the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University, thinks there is a reason for this: “Ultimately it seems we need to continue the cultural shift towards enabling our people to recognise entrepreneurialism as a real career option. We are in the teeth of a recession but when I started out in a similar recession there was very little by way of support. Today it’s different and I really do believe that we are finally integrating the support network for aspiring entrepreneurs.”

4. Entrepreneurial Spark – I led a panel debate with Jim Duffy, the CEO of this incubator and accelerator, and he had a great story to tell. His free Start Up Accelerator takes businesses through a tough 5 month process to get them in good shape.

5. Royal Bank of Scotland edging towards privatisation. Stephen Hester has done a good job getting RBS ready for a return to private ownership, even though he won’t get any thanks for it. But the reach of the bank into Scotland’s business base means it desperately needs clarity of its future if it is to be effective. It either shrinks and withers, or it is managed to a sustainable size. Never again can it be allowed to be sprawling empire Fred Goodwin spawned.

From a lower base, and with a much weaker entrepreneurial culture the picture in Scotland is looking brighter. It’s as well to keep an eye on this noisy neighbour, whether we need our passports to do business with them or not.

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Why Downtown says: "Save MOSI"

There’s a danger that once any regional business ties its fortunes to a London centre – its chances of survival diminish. That’s why a campaign to save Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) has so taken root in the city and has fuelled a strong sense of injustice.

MOSI isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ attraction in the city centre, it’s an integral part of what Manchester is all about. The start of the world’s first passenger railway service and a valuable educational resource for our children.

Downtown Manchester in Business has had no hesitation in taking a leading role in the “Save MOSI” campaign and have already begun the process of lobbying and voicing our view on this issue. I was on BBC Radio Manchester with Graham Stringer MP drawing a line in the sand on this issue and we have sat down with a number of other businesses in the city to kick off a campaign and agree its scope.

We must from the outset applaud Yakub Qureshi from the Manchester Evening News in bringing this story to the public’s attention and for Downtown members in expressing their outrage on social media sites.

The threat to MOSI comes as the national Science Museum Group is considering shutting it and the National Media Museum in Bradford and the National Rail Museum in York.

The Manchester Evening News reported: “The three northern visitor attractions, which are all part of the London-based museum group, have been put on the chopping block because of funding cuts.”

The last thing any of us in Manchester want to do is engage in a tawdry competition with Bradford and York about who deserves to survive more. Frankly it should never have got to this. It may suit the trustees of MOSI and the Science Museums Group for everyone to target the collation government and the ‘cuts to the arts” agenda. But that’s not the point either. What is the issue here is how important institutions are run and how they are supported and for who.

This campaign is only at the beginning, but it will also throw to the fore some important questions about MOSI and what it is for and how it can be improved too. That’s why we call on businesses and members of the public to start from the premise that MOSI is vital to future scientists and engineers and for the curiosity of Manchester and its visitors.

We also need to remind The Science Museum Group that they have a commitment to transfer all existing Grant in Aid on the condition that the site and collections would be preserved for a minimum of 25 years.

While we appreciate the trustees have a difficult job to balance their budget in the teeth of cuts to their budget, it is not acceptable that MOSI can be sacrificed, or that it can be even considered for closure.

As Graham Stringer MP told the Manchester Evening News: “I’m appalled at the idea we will end up with only museums in London. Something like 90 per cent of the funding for art galleries and museums goes into London already. It’s an extraordinary amount.”

Andrew Stokes, chief executive of Marketing Manchester, says: “MOSI is a museum of national significance and its visitor figures speak for themselves. Its location on the site of the world’s first passenger railway station adds to its appeal and provides a real tourism hub for the Castlefield area. Marketing Manchester will support wholeheartedly any campaign to keep the museum’s doors open – not only for the people of Greater Manchester, but also for the million international visitors a year that the city attracts.”

Jonathan Schofield, tour guide, and Manchester Confidential editor, says: “What is certain is that proposing something as blatantly unfair and desperate as closing all the Science Museum Group’s northern properties while keeping on the equally struggling London one looks shocking.”

So, stay posted, stay close and above all, Save MOSI.

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The brainy city

Quite rightly Manchester is lauded for its sporting and cultural contribution to the world. But there is also vast tradition of new ideas born of the city’s bold intellectual curiosity. Free trade capitalism, female suffrage, communism, vegetarianism, even the founding principles of the Co-operative movement were rooted in proud traditions of thought and new ideas in Manchester.

All the major political parties seem to be struggling to connect with what they really stand for. Instead of riding the technological wave of change, they seem to be drowned by it. And too often debate is quickly polarised – free speech for idiots, slogans without substance – can someone explain the difference between One Nation Labour, Red Tory and Blue Labour?

Over the next few weeks we’ll be inviting Downtown members and anyone interested in thinking a bit harder to join with us on raising the level of debate and articulating a Northern perspective on the major issues of our day.

It was one of the characteristics that attracted me to Downtown last year, a readiness for a growing group of people in our cities to approach our events with an open mind. In fact the last two events I’ve hosted have seen Lord Adonis encourage an educational revolution that is refreshing and bold, while TechHub’s Doug Ward kicked off an event with reference to the principles of Boulder theory and how a thriving technology ecosystem can thrive, inspired by Boulder in Colorado, a thriving enterprising city in the Rocky Mountains.

I’ve just spent a couple of days at Hay Festival in mid-Wales. There wasn’t much talk about start-ups and finance, but there was a real energy around understanding how technology is influencing how we learn and how quickly the world is changing. Eric Schmidt from Google had been there earlier in the week tackling big global issues, and no doubt being mugged on where his company pays its taxes.

There were thousands of people at this “Woodstock of the mind”, talking about a vast range of subjects, history, environment, creativity and there was also a fascinating analysis of the forthcoming Ashes series by Michael Vaughan, but that’s another story.

But the point of me mentioning all of this is that I’m particularly excited by our forthcoming events. An EU debate in Manchester on June the 27^th, the Northern Revolution conference on July the 4^th at MediaCity in Salford Quays. We’ve assembled a really impressive cast list of men and women with a vital contribution to this process of the exploration of ideas for what kind of world we are creating for our children in the north of England.

My good pal Mike Emmerich coined the phrase Brainy City in a speech at MIPIM. Science is a massive part of our future, but there is so much more to go at besides. Let’s all of us raise our aspirations, let’s do more of this kind of thing in Manchester.

Apart from anything, Hay-on-Wye is a dog to get to.

(pic above from Finn Beales, Hay Festival)

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