A view of Margaret Thatcher, not from the left or the right, but the North

There will be plenty of people on the left drifting into a fantasy world of what life would have been like with no Margaret Thatcher, now that there is no longer a real living Margaret Thatcher to despise, just a grave to dance on.

If you want to properly assess the legacy and the impact of the so-called Iron Lady then start with the words she chose to use when she’d won the election of 1979. Twisting the beautiful words of St Francis of Assisi she said: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

The reaction to her death – more disharmony, no consensus over what the truth is, plenty of doubt, it rather points to a failure on all fronts. And for many communities, the only hope came from successive governments.

As the brilliant sociologist Stuart Hall said, “Thatcherism” was defined by what it was for and what it was against: “the virtues of the market, competition, elitism, individual initiative, the iniquities of state intervention and bureaucracy… and against trade union militancy, national aspirations, permissiveness, women’s liberation.”

It’s all very Manichean* – if you know what that means fine, if you don’t, then that’s fine too, but you probably need to read more.

But to make things easier, I believe you have to separate what she said and what the government did. In fact, a lot of what she said was errant nonsense, ill thought through and arrogant. Such as that breathtaking baloney about there being no such thing as society, just collections of individuals and families.

But let’s for a moment concentrate on her quest for the truth.

For me the biggest failure of Thatcher and Thatcherism is that it was never really true to its revolutionary rhetoric. There was never any attempt to create new models of co-operative business, genuine shareholder democracy, or to forge a revolution in home ownership beyond selling off council houses. It remains a challenge now.

I don’t come at this from the left or the right, but from the North. I have always suffered from an excess of civic pride.

There are proud intellectual traditions in the north. Like mutuality, the co-operative movement and free trade liberalism. Instead the anti-Thatcher and pro-Thatcher camps have painted us all into a nasty form of rampant capitalism pitted against a dismal protectionist socialism.

There is a myth too that the North stood strong in 1984, but was defeated, that the brave miners led the struggle against her mighty state armoury; that they were the vanguard of the enemy within, who took her on. No they weren’t, they were pretty much on their own. I was active on the left in the 80s. I supported the miners (see above, with Rik Mayall), marched for Derek Hatton and his cronies in Liverpool, peacefully picketed Padiham power station, danced at Red Wedge gigs and bought Billy Bragg records (the revolution is just a t-shirt away, comrade).

It was a debate that was hopelessly lost. The miners were defeated, not just because they weren’t united, but were led by a tyrant to an unpopular strike that divided communities with rhetoric and tribalism. As a supporter, you rattled collection tins in working class areas and were as unpopular as a Tory. People didn’t want to know. The coal industry was a pawn in a politically motivated class struggle – by both sides.

As for her battle with the local authorities, Manchester City Council only began to be in a position to make the city a better place when they accepted the new rules and engaged. Former leader Graham Stringer deserves a lot of credit for this.

Society had changed, Thatcher provided a mood music for a generation of entrepreneurs, 11 per cent of the workforce in 1989 were self employed, made up of people like my dad, who had his own milk round. Yet that was against a backdrop of high interest rates and no real attempt to remove red tape. Instead, just the unchallenged march of the banks and their concentration of power.

I dispute the view that this created a culture of selfishness that made the world a harsher place, but something clearly snapped.

Only by attempting to govern from the centre, by taking the country with you could any politician ever hope to govern again. And a new language of business engagement has taken root.

Neil Kinnock partly saw this, but Tony Blair grasped it fully, and so too we now see the leaders of every political party today occupying familiar territory. Thatcher even said that her greatest success was New Labour. And I have always held that David Cameron is truly Blair’s heir. It all rather drives home the point that no other politician could ever expect to win one election, let alone three, by declaring war on an ‘enemy within’.

And let’s remember that. The left has been properly marginalised and defeated. The supremacy of post-Thatcherite politics for the last 23 years has been the killing of the idea that there will ever be another Thatcher of the right, or the left. For all of the talk of the triumph of neo-liberalism, most western countries have a state that produces over 40 per cent of GDP.

Finally, I can’t let the week pass without a nod in the direction of the grave dancers. I can’t personally celebrate the death of anyone. As a good mate of mine, Simon Sinclair, said this week in response to an invitation to a party to mark her death: “I’d be very sad and think less of you if you actually celebrated the death of another human being. I don’t remember anyone celebrating the death of even Fred West or Osama Bin Laden. And nobody danced for the death of Stalin or Mao Zedong. So why anyone I respect might do a childish jig over the death of someone who took an immense popular mandate to fight a huge national decline in the way she understood the country would want to, and repeatedly elected her to do, makes me feel a little diminished as a member of the human race.”

*Manichean – the belief that everything can be reduced to a fight between good and evil.

This club is our club

At Hillsborough today I ran into Rovers fans who I've been through a lot with.

There was Kevin Bradley, who took me, aged 11, to Ewood Park in 1977 as his mate. I didn't know whether to thank him or not.

Outside the ground I met Andy Carruthers and Margaret Reid, the first time I'd seen them since our friend Mark Wastell died. I first met Andy when he drove us to Ipswich in 1983 and I got chased all over town for my Fila top. Margaret even ran our London branch football team in the 1990s. They travel everywhere following Rovers. We had a memorable trip to Lyon with a gang of us in 1998, Mark included.

A more recent acquaintance is Mushtaq Khan, who I'm very fond of. We've been threatening to meet at a game ever since we met on a project we've been trying to get going last year.

I also had a nice day with one of my lads, Louis. I love how his understanding of football is growing and how he's developing a dark ironic sense of humour for a 12 year old. He'll need it.

Everything else about the day was rubbish. The performance was abject. Cowardly and inept. Lacking belief and passion. Only David Dunn had the ability and the hunger. Some had neither. Most have the ability but just don't seem to care.

It was depressing seeing the Leppings Lane stand with its narrow gangways poor stewards and no memorial to the 96 Liverpool fans who perished in 1989. They may have won belated justice, but the lack of a memorial to them at Hillsborough is a disgrace. If I blinked and missed it, then I'm sorry, but I didn't see it.

Supporting a football team is about more than the halfwits on the pitch, or the owners (wherever they may be). Our bond is also to each other, to what we have shared, the places we've been and to the highs and the lows. Venky's will go one day; maybe not as soon as we'd like, but there will be a Blackburn Rovers in our hearts forever more. This club is our club.  

Crocky Trail, a brilliant place the Daily Mail probably thinks has been banned by the nanny state

OK, I'm not thrilled that of our five sons, three picked up minor injuries. I don't welcome it. But I am pleased they had a brilliant time at Crocky Trail. They took risks, they rubbed up against older kids who pushed and shoved up the Titanic and scrambled up the climbing wall without harnesses. I liked it that the rides were rough and ready. I liked being able to take our dog for a walk around the trail while the younger lads went on rope swings and chain walks across a dyke.

In my youth we had similar fun for free, it was called "the woods" but this was a brilliant collective experience.

This review is also on Trip Advisor.

Manchester at MIPIM - the appliance of science

I have really enjoyed MIPIM this year. Mostly because I’ve been following the news there from Manchester, London and Liverpool. I left Cannes to the liggers.

Joking aside, there are worse places to be than the French Riveria at this time of year, but if you go to MIPIM then you have to work hard to really get the most out of it.

It’s one of those events that plays to Manchester’s strengths. Working the event and providing strong intelligent leadership.

Manchester uses the presence at MIPIM to wisely partner with four other European cities with complementary agendas and areas of co-operation. There is also a great deal to be learned from Hamburg, Lyon, Barcelona and Amsterdam.

It was also exciting to hear that New Economy Manchester’s chief executive Mike Emmerich wants the city to be a world science city, providing solid support for enterprise and investment in science across the city region and explain how it can be achieved. The University of Manchester’s professor of physics was also on hand to position the city globally. He’s Brian Cox, by the way, you may have heard of him. Other cities I could mention would have been content to roll out a celebrity and press the flesh.

At the heart of Manchester’s Science strategy is Graphene, the wonder material, discovered at the University by Russian born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.

I have heard the criticism that hundreds of patents have been filed in China and Korea, while Manchester has just a few. This is to misunderstand both the value of patents and what Manchester’s research base is capable of.

I’ll defer to Clive Rowland from the University to explain that as he does here.

Anyway, my good friend Andrew Spinoza has been good to his word and compiled a terrific blog from Cannes, which you can read here.

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Amazing - Manchester’s Graphene video. Very exciting.

Amazing - Manchester’s Graphene video. Very exciting.

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Downtown Show Me The Money seminars – February 2013

Downtown in Business held three seminars in different cities – Manchester, Preston and Leeds (pictured) where we discussed how businesses can access finance in a world where the banks aren’t lending like they used to.
Off the agenda was bank bashing, not because we’re sucking up to them or anything, but because it’s counter productive.
Here was my challenge as an event host – cover quite technical subjects and keep everyone in the audience onside.
Sometimes it’s a tricky line to tread. Finance professionals – like any professional group – have their own acronyms and jargon. You assume the audience know something of balance sheets, factoring, fixed charges and VCTs, because they run businesses and want to learn something new. That’s why they’ve come along. But equally you can’t lapse straight into all this because some speakers know what’s what. As a journalist I always tried to present information in a clear way – always explaining acronyms and terms of reference. Same goes for events. You can’t stop speakers every two minutes to clarify a basic point. You can’t present this kind of material in a Ladybird style either.

All the panellists at all three events were top drawer. Some of them I’ve worked with before – Mark Fahey of the London Stock Exchange, and Paul Taberner at Enterprise Ventures are both really compelling speakers, as is Steve Charnock of Seneca Partners. The really pleasant surprises were Helen Clayton of Deloitte and Melanie Hird of Seneca, not just because the latter two are super smart women leading the way in a man’s world either. Both had excellent delivery and a real understanding of finance from everyone’s point of view – banks, businesses, suppliers, investors in a business. My job is to give them the time and space to explain themselves.

How do you judge whether the balance was struck right? Sometimes people tell you, but sometimes you have to read the expressions and body language. A couple of very young journalists from Huddled came along and gave the Manchester 4 stars out of 5. They weren’t too baffled by any jargon. And the more experienced finance people gave us very positive direct feedback that they’d got a lot out of the event.

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Silicon Valley one year on

It’s March and now close to a year since I went on a trip to Silicon Valley in California to see how one of the world’s most dynamic business region’s works.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be marking the anniversary when a few of the folks who made the trip will be catching up on how they’ve done since. I already know that since the visit some in our delegation of 18 have had frustrations and setbacks. We were told to expect that and embrace it, to be fair.

Indeed, much of what we shared and enjoyed could pass for common sense: follow your passions, ride the waves, iterate, innovate, change, measure everything, create dynamic workplaces and treat collaborators with respect and a generous spirit. I find all of these messages relevant each and every day.

I returned from that trip with a messianic zeal to do what I can to edge my home city of Manchester towards being one of the leading entrepreneurial regions and at the forefront of digital business.

Added to that, two of my friends who I’m involved in different businesses with have also been over on a recent trip, and Downtown is hosting an event with them in Liverpool.

Our Downtown agenda this year embraces all of that: our recent events on new forms of finance have been very well received – but the next stage is to broker quality conversations and actions to put the city’s tech business ideas on a proper springboard for the future.

My good pal Gareth Burton has really thrown himself into this too. As well as building his family accountancy practice in Cheshire he’s embedded himself in TechHub Manchester, a vibrant incubator space in Carver’s Warehouse in the Northern Quarter.

This week Gareth introduced me to a remarkable young man called Doug Ward, who worked with journalist Martin Bryant to persuade TechHub to add a Manchester franchise to the bases in London, Riga and Bucharest. There are some great plans underway for events and projects in the building, but also from the businesses which are taking root there.

Doug wants to promote all of the United Kingdom’s tech clusters and foster greater links between them. He’s also a technology advisor to the Cabinet Office and to the University of Manchester Innovation Centre. His aim is to see Manchester be a top 5 European startup cluster.

There’s always been a danger that Manchester talks itself up in anything it does. Now is the time for delivery and a recognition of what we have, rather than moaning it isn’t Google. I like this piece by Telecity founder Rob Coupland on Manchester’s technology resurrection. Yes, we can point to successful local tech businesses like NCC Group, ANS, UKFast, Melbourne, LateRooms and 2Ergo that operate globally and successfully, and yes, we have the legacy of Alan Turing and the spirit of Tony Wilson.

But there are edgy urban tech communities in many cities around the world – great products and new applications are being written everywhere – not just in Silicon Valley. Manchester has an immense challenge here. I was pleased to see Barclays name above the door – and that a few VCs have signed the visitor’s book – but awareness from the serious business finance providers that needs to stimulate this sector is the most important next step. The ideas are there. The connections are in place. The worldview is mature and open. It’s important that people with the right skills and the same ambitions share all this and then buy into that vision with investment. That single truth has been as vital for Silicon Valley’s past as it will be for Manchester’s future. 

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The Englishman who transformed Benfica. The strange tale of Ted Smith.

Who was the English manager who triggered a revolution in European football, and transformed a club side that became one of the giants of the modern game? Terry Venables? Nope. Sir Bobby Robson? Nah! Roy Hodgson? Come on!

No, the name Ted Smith will hardly register, but his extraordinary story is as dramatic for the gaps and mysteries as it is for the affect a journeyman Millwall footballer from Grays in Essex, had on the Benfica team he coached from 1948 to 1952 and challenged Real Madrid’s hegemony in the subsequent decade.

Indeed, while this football revolution was underway, the man who planted the seeds had quietly retired from football and was running a pub in Lancaster, having only occasionally dipped back into football with Workington in the Third Division North from 1953-54, before the great Bill Shankly took over, and later with the local non-league side Lancaster City in 1967.

I stumbled across this story by accident. My grandfather, Stan Taylor, had been a Commando in the war, served his country heroically and was a man of some stature in the community in Lancaster where he had moved to be the manager of Woolworths. He became friends with Ted Smith, pictured above, who at the time was the landlord of the Red Cross pub in Skerton, just over the River Lune from the city centre.

But John Edward Smith, to give him his full name, had a back story. While he was pulling pints and smoking full strengths Capstans in a fairly draery concrete riverside pub, the Benfica team he built were lifting the European Cup; first in 1961 and then again in 1962. The captain of the team was the legendary Jose Aguas, the lynchpin of a side that went on to break Real Madrid's dominance of European football in the 1960s, then doubling the triumph by defeating Barcelona a year later.

Smith had brought Aguas, from a poor white colonial family in Angola, to Portugal and the two had a strong bond. I know this because my own Dad witnessed their emotional reunion outside the Park Lane Hotel in London in 1962 when Benfica were in town for the European Cup semi final at White Hart Lane against the double winning Spurs side.

As a player Smith had been decent full back with Millwall, playing 143 times and scoring just once. Small pieces of Pathe news archives show him training in 1938 and introducing the Millwall team to King George VIth, a sight which his son Harvey has delighted in watching since, as he was too young to see him play in person.

After England stuffed Portugal 10-0 in May 1947, with Finney and Matthews starring, it was decided to search for an English coach.

How Smith came be in the right place at the right time is a mystery, or just a piece of good timing. But almost as soon as Smith moved to Lisbon in 1948 he quickly made changes. As well as attracting players from the Portuguese colonies, like Aguas, he also introduced a form of health service between the local people in a poor area of Lisbon, and the club.

On the pitch he worked wonders too. Benfica broke the dominance of Sporting, by winning the 1949 Cup. He then built on that and won the 1951 championship, added 2 more cups and Benfica’s first international title, the Taca Latina, the ancestor of the European Cup, featuring clubs from France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. The record books show he retired for ‘personal reasons’ and though skipping his job as coach, he kept a link to Benfica as youth coach.

Another side to his character was a jealousy as his attractive wife proved the centre of attention from the Portuguese players and hangers on at the club.

Smith sent his family back to England, tried to go it alone for a while, but eventually followed them home. His life appeared torn, though he fell in love with Portugal its people and its culture, especially the music of Fado, it became a burden to him.

He briefly returned to football in the unlikeliest of jobs - a newspaper cutting from the Lancaster Guardian rather nonchalantly reports how "Mr Ted Smith, the former Benfica coach," became the manager of Lancaster City FC in 1967, as if that achievement was on a par with joining from Barrow or Bamber Bridge.

He returned briefly to management at Portuguese side Atletico from 1971 to 1973, but it seems remarkable that so little is known of his life and his achievements.

Even Harvey has told me only the sketchy details he has learned; his father passed away in 1993 and is buried in the English cemetery in Lisbon, where Benfica looked after him in his final years, respect and love from a fine club who remembered a hero of their history. But there are huge gaps in his life.

These gaps add to the mystery and the sadness that lies behind a torn character unable to settle in one place or anoher. Even his own son, Harvey, has bitter sweet memories.

“My father went missing in the early 70's a great man manager but pretty crap as a dad, I never saw him again I found out he had gone back to Portugal ending up in the Acores where he again proved his talents as a football coach.”

Running a pub in the north of England, and later in the Lake District, could never capture that romance in his life again.

Harvey has told me: “There is so much that I don’t remember and most of the medals and trophies my dad acquired over his time in football have gone, lost or been stolen, however, everything I read from his time in Portugal assures me that he was most highly regarded. There are quotes of him as being part of the club’s history, the layer of the club’s foundations and a beloved son of a great club.

“On a recent visit to Benfica I was returning to Lisbon Airport and a taxi driver turned out to be an ex Atletico player who my dad had scouted for the club, he refused to take the fare. So, I guess he had some uses, the old bugger.”

Decision on ASDA & Kirkland planning applications

The ASDA planning application is due to go before our local councillors at Area Committee tonight, Wednesday 27th February, Marple Cricket Club, Bowden Lane at 6.00pm

The doors will open at 5.00pm and as numbers are limited you are advised to get there early.
The Area Committee is requested by planning officers to recommend that the Planning and Highways Regulation Committee refuse planning permission.

Both ASDA and Kirkland applications will be referred to and decided by the Planning and Highways Regulation Committee on:

Friday 1st March - Venue: Stockport County Football Ground, Room TNT 2 Suite, Edgeley Park, Hardcastle Road, Edgely Stockport SK3 9DD at 6.00pm

Doors open at 5.00pm and as numbers are limited to 210 people you are advised to get there early.

Growth Accelerator – partner event in Yorkshire – February 2013

I was delighted to don the purple GrowthAccelerator tie and get back on the road to promote this fantastic business service. The first event was in Rotherham, the next day I was back on the road and up with the lark in Leeds. Both events had a real energy about them and a real rapport between the panel members who I did interviews with. I’ve added insights from them to a blog on the GrowthAcclerator website on international trade tips.

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Kloot - the band Elbow could have been

We went to see I Am Kloot on Friday. I find lead vocalist and front man John Bramwell so enchanting and his music capable of such stirring, despite such heavy dollops of melancholia. I wonder whether this new album Let It All In will be their breakthrough, certainly it deserves to on the basis of the first few listens. I was happy for Elbow when they achieved great success, but as I've got to love Kloot I've felt a nagging frustration that they are better. It's not a contest, but I wish it more than anything. A new video released this week may help, there's another one up there too (above). One of them will have to be this album's One Day Like This, though I'm not sure which one yet.

Another observation. The audience at the Ritz was a real mix. Usually a musical style like this would be more suited to the Bridgewater Hall or the Lowry, but Kloot appeal to people who like a drink and may have been to the Ritz on a punk might many eons ago. The mixture of drink and quiet moments leads to frequent chit chat during the show. Really annoying.

Anyway, enough of that. Go and buy the album. Piccadilly records are stocking it, but HMV aren't.

The real Harpurhey

Really, don’t bother watching The Estate set in Harpurhey on BBC3, it sounds exploitative and boring, the worst kind of poverty porn. It’s one of those TV programmes that seeks to portray the people of a poor area as freaks for the entertainment and amusement of the rest of us. In the process it upsets the locals and frustrates those who agreed to appear when they come out of it badly. Frankly it sounds exploitative and boring.

If you are interested in understanding the tough north Manchester neighbourhood then may I suggest instead that you take a trip to the Factory Youth Zone.

I went there this week and had a good look round with energetic fundraiser Claire Griffiiths and the CEO Paul Bird.

Up on the wall is plastered the mission statement of the Zone - “Somewhere to go, something to do, someone to talk to.” The three things the kids wanted from the new facility when it opened, following the lead of Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

The sports, social and education facilities are top notch, but it’s the passion and commitment of the volunteers and the enthusiasm of the kids that really set me alight. I think they’ve struck a remarkably successful balance between learning and leisure. Yes, there’s table tennis tables, which we all remember from our youth clubs, but also some incredible courses and projects. Plenty of business people have been through the Zone to talk to the kids about what it’s like in the world of work.

The Zone is our charity this year and we’re going to be doing a few things that bridge entrepreneurship of young Mancunians with the community of Downtown. Please get in touch if you’d like to help us.

On a totally different theme, another story that has loomed large with me this week has been the resignation of the Pope. If you’ve ever been to Rome, you’ll know what I mean when I say it feels like the global headquarters of a major international corporation. A real company town. One of the many ways in which the Roman Catholic church differs from corporations however is that it’s CEO tends to die on the job, rather than gracefully retire.

It annoys me that football managers refuse to resign as they seek a big payout, so many business leaders stay on too long in search of that payoff and the stubborn desire to build a legacy. I have rather a lot of admiration for those who genuinely step to one side and get out of the way of their successor – Sir Terry Leahy did it. Tony Blair wanted to, but was grumpily pushed out. So you have to rather admire Pope Benedict’s precedent-setting move to retire the Papacy. He sees the enormity of the task of leading such a complex organization and is restating what is expected of the role in future years.

It was Enoch Powell who said all political careers end in failure. I suspect that history will be rather kinder to Joseph Ratzinger.

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Liberty 5th birthday party

listen to ‘Michael Taylor on Liberty’s fifth birthday.’ on Audioboo

//

Here’s an audioboo of me at the Liberty Pensions 5th birthday party at the National Football Museum. It was such a terrific occasion, the guest speakers were me and Martin Vander Weyer of the Spectator, who really impressed with his rendition of his poem about the financial crisis. Inspiring stuff.

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Northern Monkeys on BBC Radio Manchester

Finally got round to uploading this interview I did about Northern Monkeys.

Our reservations on HS2

Let’s be honest, successive governments have failed the North of England. A high speed rail line to London is the latest initiative designed to help our economy. But it brings with it some sizeable risks. I think there are four main dangers lurking ahead.

One, and possibly the biggest risk of all to the prosperity of the North of England is that the solution to the economic lag of the North is somehow solved by building a  railway.

Yes, it will help, but it mustn’t be used to tick a box. It is an enormous investment, but it is going to take an absolute age. The time it will take to build the thing is a generation away. It is bold to take such a long view, but much more needs to happen in the meantime.

As I argued on BBC’s Sunday Politics last week – trying to get a word in edgeways between junior Tory disability Esther McVey MP and Labour MP Hazel Blears – Enterprise Zones alone won’t achieve economic growth. The same applies to HS2, Regional Growth Fund and Local Enterprise Partnerships. Too much box ticking is going on in isolation, too little joined up thinking.

Two, it is being built the wrong way round. If the aim is to help the North, then the first phase should be to redevelop Piccadilly station, build the tunnel under south Manchester, connect the airport and provide further connectivity to Manchester Airport, making it accessible from all points south.

Three, something very serious needs to be done to address the transport infrastructure of how the country is crossed from East to West. The expansion of Liverpool docks by Peel deserves fulsome support for how goods are then distributed to the rest of the North. By throwing so much capital infrastructure into HS2, it kicks this urgent need into the long grass.

Four, the shorter journey time to London starts to shrink the reach of the talent pool. As Manchester and Leeds are two hours from the capital then it makes sense to have a physical presence in the North. Cutting journey times to an hour undermines the case for that. I think the flight of senior corporate finance professionals from Birmingham to London has been evidence of this.

As Alex Massie asked in the Spectator this week, is HS2 really for the North, or for London?

Finally though, and positively, the strongest argument for the building of HS2 is that it will relieve capacity on the West Coast Mainline. Yet it doesn’t sound as electrifying as cutting journey time to an hour, but it is the most practical and necessary action that needs to be taken sooner rather than later. Too much freight is on the roads while the line is so full.

Downtown’s CEO Frank McKenna has made a passionate case for nothing short of a policy revolution on all fronts. We hope you’ll join us in continuing to make this case.

This is a crosspost from my Downtown Manchester blog.

Downtown on BBC's Sunday Politics

Downtown on BBC's Sunday Politics:

I was on BBC’s Sunday Politics on the 27th of January 2012 discussing Enterprise Zones.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01q436g/

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Councils to run the trains?

Manchester Airport Group’s bid for Stansted Airport is yet another example of how the city region leadership is challenging orthodox practice, and applying imaginative and strategic thinking to regional challenges. The next one will be an audacious bid for the regional rail franchises.

Rail franchising is a mess. The usage of rail services is often held as a success, but the customer satisfaction is rating will be poor.

Call it a gut feeling, but the train operating companies don’t strike me as happy places to work. I see too many miserable ticket inspectors and grumpy drivers for whom the general public are an inconvenience.

Notionally, these are private companies, run for profit and in a competitive environment. In reality they are heavily subsidized and tightly regulated.

And yet a major change is now on the cards. Work is already underway for the a consortium of metropolitan authorities in the North to form a new company to run the rail franchises currently controlled by Transpennine and by Northern Rail. The leadership for the project, as mapped out in a report submitted to the Combined Authority board last year, is Manchester.

It may strike many of us in the private sector as odd, that in an era of austerity and cuts that the councils are still able to operate in such a bold and creative way. It also shows how important transport is to the strategic development of the city region - and doesn’t always have to include an unpopular congestion charge. 

There will be risks – for a start they may not win. But as the report stated the upsides are massive and the flexibility offered to a body whose objectives are strategic, rather than simply running it for a subsidised profit are clear.

“Upfront capital investment may be necessary to find ways of delivering long‐run improvements in the efficiency of local services. Examples of such investments might include electrification, smartcard, turn‐around facilities and potentially some tram train conversions. As part of the GMCA city deal central government has committed to define a list of capital investments to reduce the cost base of the railway in the North of England.”

We are once again reminded of how fortunate we are in Greater Manchester to have a local leadership with vision and ambition. As Sir Howard Bernstein said in a national newspaper last year: “Working in a co-ordinated fashion means we can be not only strategic but also, crucially I believe, imaginative - coming up with new ways of doing things which challenge orthodox thinking.”

Finally, a few words on Europe. What if David Cameron doesn’t get a fulsome reform of the European Union and of Britain’s deal with Europe. Firstly, would he even admit it? and if he did, would he then campaign to leave, and what would that do to his personal standing? He’s right to grasp this nettle, but why leave it lingering for so long.   

• Jan 25

When 76 out of 92 means 29 to go

We went to Chesterfield last week to watch Adebayo Akinfenwa, Northampton's massive striker and the strongest player on FIFA13 on the Xbox, or so I'm told.

That was why the kids wanted to go. My motive was to visit a new home ground - my 76th of the current 92. Except it isn't, it was my 63rd. I've lost 11 who have new stadiums, and then there is the Wimbledon situation which I'm not sure how I count that.

So, there we are. On the Punk 92 I'm at 76.

Of the 92.net rules, it's 63.

Of total grounds visited it's 135.

HMV, Blockbuster, Comet - the property challenge

Another dismal chapter in Britain’s economic history. Another series of platitudes and posturing from politicians. It was depressing but predictable this week to see the reaction to the collapse of HMV and Jessops. Banks have been blamed, the lack of an industrial strategy for retail has been cited by Labour’s Chuka Umuna, while no-one seems willing to grasp the self-evident fact that the underlying weakness in retail is rooted in the distribution of land. Simply put there is far, far too much space being used for shops we don’t use any more.

We can all be nostalgic for the local record store – I know I am. We can cherish the experience of personal service. But as the staff at Jessops know to their painful cost, they were enthusiasts for their products and massively helpful, but deep down they knew that every other camera demonstration they performed resulted in someone buying online.

HMV and Blockbuster have been struggling for a while - poor decision making hasn’t helped, but they are businesses being disrupted by the onward march of online retail.

Certain products just aren’t bought in store anymore – music is one. Books may soon follow. In San Francisco last year I struggled to find a decent city centre bookstore to buy some thought leading titles. There was, depressingly, plenty of bad coffee and free wifi, loads of branded stores you could find in any western city (Gap, H&M, Urban Outfitters) – I found City Lights – which didn’t have a business section, but a tantalising range of anarchist poetry. But Barnes & Noble and Borders have long since fled.

The problem, put starkly, is the determination of landowners, and property portfolio managers and their agents, to flog this dead horse as if it could be wished back to life. It can’t be. But equally it would take real bravery to construct policy incentives that encouraged alternative land use in centres and a move away from retail. Free car parking might help, so too could more flexible view of planning.

I agreed with most of what Mary Portas said about how high streets can be animated and empty shops brought into different use. It’s actually so obvious it shouldn’t really need saying. But landlords won’t or can’t accept that their high yielding assets won’t continue to bring continued rent roll. In many ways they are reaping what they have sewn. Upward only rent reviews, poorly maintained estates, covenant protection, risk aversion, quarter days, regular yields. Game over guys, and the problems haven’t even begun to be addressed.

Looking around Greater Manchester some regional town centres are dying – Bury got its scheme away before the banking crash, Stockport didn’t. And the squabbling now over how their Portas pittance is distributed sounds horribly like the passengers on the Titanic putting their towels down on the best deckchairs (were Germans on the Titanic? Maybe not). No, the draw of a confident and colourful experiential Manchester city centre as a place to enjoy a day out is always going to outstrip the concrete wasteland of a regional town centre with arcades, pound stores, pie shops and the depressing long lines of charity outlets which all tell a tale of inexorable decline. Much as it baffles me, even the Trafford Centre is a preferred destination to that.

Before anyone pipes up with the example of Manchester’s Northern Quarter just bear in mind how microscopic it is on the overall map of the wider city region. Much as I love the likes of Oi Polloi, Piccadilly Records and Soup Kitchen, it’s a minority pursuit in a handful of streets in a city region of 2.5 million souls. There’s been talk of economic rebalancing in the air for the last five years. Urban land use is the hardest and most urgent one of all.


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A voice for business

Business has a voice in the narrative of Manchester. It may sometimes jar with other stakeholders, but this is a city that seems to embrace enterprise and commercial innovation.

It was with a certain sadness that we recorded the last BBC Radio Manchester business programme before Christmas. The format, where two private sector people, drawn from a rotating group of about 12, comment on the issues of the day and interview a couple of guests with interesting things to say.

I thought we were properly getting into our stride over the last six months, especially since we moved to a new shorter half hour format with no music. Interspersing the items. There was something quite comical about finishing an interview with a business owner about a new invention, or arguiung the toss over tax policy with a great business voice like Steve Falder of HMG Paints, and then the presenter elegantly calling time for a bit of Phil Collins.

But, all good things come to an end and I just hope the station is serious about the claim that they are keen on maintaining the level of coverage of business issues throughout their output.

As a city Manchester continually demonstrates a great maturity in the level of debate about where the city is heading. Growth, ambition for our young, opportunities for all and having the chance to showcase what we’re good at is important. Some BBC local radio has resigned itself to talking about nostalgia, last night’s TV and having phone ins for moaning football fans. Having a city radio station with the reach of BBC Radio Manchester is a real asset and I hope he vibrancy of the city continues to have a voice on it.

One of the other great achievements of the programme has been to coach and nurture a cadre of business people in the skills required to be good broadcasters. With BBC Radio5Live and the BBC1 Breakfast programme now produced from Salford Quays.

At Downtown we have good connections with the production teams on both of these national programmes. Both me and Frank have been on television at ungodly hours of the day and night to make the case for all manner of issues from banking reform, tax policy, transport and making a northern balance to the metropolitan agenda.

These are also opportunities for members to come on the radio and tell their stories. The team are never happier than when they get their wellies and hard hats on and visit the kind of grafters on a business park in the sticks that is bucking the trend. So, the more you tell us about what’s important, the better we can help you.

It’s a frequent complaint from business people that the national narrative doesn’t reflect the difficulties that businesses face. We may have lost one opportunity to make the case, but there are plenty more.

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