What's pleasing me today

I wouldn't get too carried away, Burnham gets in this month and once he's finished arse fucking small business he'll go after boomer wealth.

Oh well. Their annual business class flights to Australia eat a fair chunk of it anyway.

Do you mean "making them pay tax"? Because I can't imagine he'd do that.

Speaking as a small business in Manchester, we've done alright.

What things did Burnham do in Manchester that you think will be applicable on a national scale?

It wasn't him that started it but he kept it going. Empowered a culture of being able to get on with doing good modern business. Didn't forget about the whole of the populace. Heavy focus on transport. Helped build the investment culture. Etc etc.

Most of that just sounds like word soup. What policies/decisions/actions did he take to:

• empower a culture of modern business
• not forget about the whole of the populace (with regard to what?)
• what do you mean by building an investment culture? He encouraged foreign investment in building apartments? By what means?

The only thing I can clearly identify is the transport network, which was really good, but only happened in the last few years (and which Starmer has kind of already started doing with trains nationally, so not sure there's much to do there for Burnham?).

This probably sounds like I'm being snippy. I'm not. I really hope he works out well for the UK obviously.

My concern is he came into Manchester when it had already undergone 15-20 years of good progress, which he'd had fuck all to do with, put some bee pictures on the side of some buses, and now he's become the great hope of the nation?

Would absolutely love to do a detailed analysis but I really can't be arsed as I'm at the cricket. My business has done well. My friends businesses have done well. Standard of living is great. It remains the fastest growing city economy in the UK. And it's a fucking great night out.

All of which were presumably due to the Tories being in charge for the last 14 years? What did Burnham do?

Enjoy the cricket. It can wait till Monday.

Very unsure of the basis for this statement..

What's got better since things have been nationalised? The answer will be it's not all done yet to give it time.

But I see no improvements. SWT have been nationalised or about 15 months now and things are worse (statistically not just based on vague feeling). They reduced the opening hours of their helpline last week because they have been getting too many delay repay requests (this was the reason they gave).

To be fair I don't think anyone can make transport better, everything is just too old and fucked so giving nationalisation a go can't hurt as a last roll of the dice.

I wasn't arguing it's better, just that he's started going down the path of bringing transport "in house".

Had a look around the club shop earlier today.

It was a bit of a mixed bag if I'm honest.

The adventure started with my offering to take a photo of a random Japanese tourist next to the big 'NFFC' in the Main Stand car park as I could see he was struggling to get the pose he wanted in selfie mode. He was most grateful of the assistance.

Inside the shop, I decided against buying some new bright nylon shiny shiny training attire on account of me rarely going training these as evidenced by my less than elite athlete 50somethimg year old fat knacker silhouette.

But I did buy a couple of bits of cheap tat, including a scarf car pennant that I decided would look resplendent atop my whiteboard in the office, some half price vintage kit coasters, a metal sign for the garden and cute teddy bear plush toy thing for Mrs. Seán, because I'm a fucking catch.

You would presume wrong. Manchesters resurgence started in the early 90s with a pragmatic Labour Council that worked professionally with whichever government was in power. Got funding to redevelop pieces of Manchester like Spinningfield. Worked well, attracted business, generated taxes. People living in the city went from circa 500 to many thousands. Redevelopment continues. Our offices are in Ancoats which was a genuine no go area and also home to Sankey Soap. Now prestige. City centre is increasingly humanised.
Much of what Burnham has done haa been around transport and education and addressing regional disparity in funding which we as employers see the benefit of. As a minimum, he was in power from 2017 and didn't fuck it up.

This is worth a read Manchester unspun

Examples of his policies around education and regional disparity in funding? What changed?

He does seem keen on lots of devolution. Which I'm in two minds about. There's only so many ways you can split a finite pot of money, and moving it locally introduces more layers of bureaucracy which will swallow up a percent or two along the way. I'm also concerned the big infrastructure projects don't get progressed because no central body has the funds to do them. Presumably it could increase wealth inequality between regions too depending on the formula that is used (or if not lead to resentment and further division of the country).

I presumed this was an article. A book ! Ha. Zero chance that's happening.