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21 september 2010, marvellous, mechanical manchester !

With due thanks to a colleague for pointing this out, the new york times has run a sensational piece on the city. Manchester has a "habit to do everything well... manchester is far and away the best town in great britain. It has all the public spirit, energy and municipal self-pride of birmingham, without its unpleasant bumptiousness. It is far more cosmopolitan and broadminded than liverpool and kindly in spirit than glasgow, a thousand times more conscious of municipal utilities, rights and responsibilities than sprawling, disunited london. Its chief citizens are the pick of the kingdom, the choicest specimens of the capable english. They have carried british commerce to its furthest points... Manchester and the enormous human hive of which it is the industrial centre... is also the greatest productive and manufacturing district in the world... it furnishes nearly two-thirds all of all the exports of great britain" and so it goes on. It's 1893 of course, but after a few years here now, I can testify that some things have not changed...