8 march 2015, everything except a beach

Someone - alright the guardian - has picked up my idea of moving parliament up to manchester. In fairness, I only mooted the house of lords (see 1 november 2014, in scotland's wake), anyway ripe for transformation into a regional assembly like the german bundesrat, whereas mr jenkins would move the whole shooting match. Hats off to him. The minor wave of agreement to this that has swept the airwaves since the speaker announced the houses of parliament were no longer fit for purpose can be summarised as: you know what, if we were going to move the political capital anywhere it would be manchester - but that's not really going to happen, is it. Oh well. The narrative rides another, much bigger and more substantive wave, that has seen the praises of project manchester sung to extraordinary heights in the hallowed establishment pages of the quality press, with the likes of the sunday times, the economist and - excellent article alert - the financial times giving the devo manc (see 8 november, and so it came to pass) proposals legs, at least until the election. I am kvelling, with whatever the opposite is of chickens coming home to roost. Albeit from a different perch, I am rather proud to still be a part of it all.