Is Manchester dying?

[Greg Bowman]

5 hours ago, 24 year mortgage 8itch said:

. The feeling I've got in recent years and where I think Manchester is going wrong, like everywhere else, is that it's trying too hard to be like London rather than just being Manchester.

 

Spot on. I always think if you go to a gig regularly, New Years eve parties, your mates every summer barbeque, its always the party after the one you should have really have stopped going to that convinces you to stop going.

London is like that its over - we have had a good run, now populated by starry eyed snowflakes from the home counties who think Hoxton and Hackney are nice and Zone 3 is various shades of Eastern European ghettos, Tower Hamlets might as well be Islamic State

Weird thing the slightly shabby chic bit of London West of Marble Arch which was Arab even in the 60's still feels OK and familiar

I hope Manchester realises this and as you say creates its own identity

 

 

[Greg Bowman]

5 hours ago, rollover said:

A hotel in Manchester racked up 266 'terrible' ratings

Pictures show the Merchant Hotel in Manchester that guests on TripAdvisor have described as 'something out of a horror movie'. A single room with a shower and sink but no toilet costs £42 - not including an extra £2 for towels. Guests are forced to use a shared toilet at the end of the corridor. Dated decor and old fashioned carpets, disgusting chairs layered in grime, one reporter for the Manchester Evening News - who visited the hotel to see if the reviews were as bad as reported - said it even crunched at the touch. Stained walls and cracks around the bed from what looked like previous water damage and more stains and cracks around the main stairwell. 

Guests also have to endure exiting onto a back street filled with wheelie bins, spilled litter and the foul smell of urine. Added to that there is graffiti on the door and one of the information boxes inside contained  just one very crumpled and dirty looking sheet of paper detailing room prices. Daily Mail

I have stayed in Shite hotels all over the UK including  London at more than this so whats your point ?

[Oliver Sutton]

Love Manchester .

Great city. Great airport and transport infrastructure, Great music scene.

Fewer Manure fans than other cities. What's not to like.

[ubuntu]

16 minutes ago, Oliver Sutton said:

Love Manchester .

Great city. Great airport and transport infrastructure, Great music scene.

Fewer Manure fans than other cities. What's not to like.

obviously you don't frequent north Mnachester then, is full of them traditionally.Born and brought up in 80s Manchester, couldn't wait to get out.

[StainlessSteelCat]

2 hours ago, Confusion of VIs said:

Remote work has its drawbacks, no office politics means no networking so reduced chance of influencing decisions or getting promotion. I have worked in a few places where it was an option and it was mainly taken up by those with either no interest in or no hope of promotion. 

  

1

Bingo 

[Riedquat]

2 hours ago, Confusion of VIs said:

Remote work has its drawbacks, no office politics means no networking so reduced chance of influencing decisions or getting promotion. I have worked in a few places where it was an option and it was mainly taken up by those with either no interest in or no hope of promotion. 

I like to have a bit of separation (both in time and distance) between work and home, and dislike the way there's less and less direct interaction between people, so would prefer not to work from home. I've no interest in promotion.

As far as Manchester goes the closest I usually get is Stockport (since I work there), but on the odd occasion I do venture in it shows little sign of dying, beyond the usual way the whole country is going. When I first moved this way I was expecting the city centre to be a run-down dump and was rather surprised quite how much it wasn't.

[winkie]

 

[Venger]

1 hour ago, Greg Bowman said:

Ha ha, Southerners maybe ! North and east Londoners we are used to being  light on our toes if approached by some herberts.

I love Manchester worked in South Manchester in the 80's as did my wife in different businesses and sent our daughter to Uni there. I would probably choose a lifestyle similar to my Southern one, I really like Knutsford seems best of both worlds close to Manchester and it's airport but nice feel.

I think people are getting bored with London and a rebalancing will occur so hope you are right

 

It is okay to visit from time-to-time.   Tatton.  Osborne's manor.  Just outside my areas-of-interest for buying a home.  

Main centre pavement annoys me but also suits the place in equal measure.   Await to see how any new pavement / shared car access plan works out.

Quote

 

Aristocratic old maid's attempt to stop couples walking arm-in-arm is finally undone as town ends two centuries' tradition of narrow pavements

Lady Jane Stanley offered to pay £400 for new pavements in hometown
Condition was that people must walk in single file as she hated affection

4 December 2014 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2860526/Cheshire-council-puts-wider-pavements-Knutsford-spinsters-attempts-stop-public-affection.html

Quote

 

The history books say that Lady Jane Stanley, daughter of the 11th Earl of Derby, paid for the town’s thoroughfares to be paved in the late 18th century.

But Lady Jane was a lifelong spinster who suggested as her epitaph: “A maid I lived and a maid I died; I never was asked and never denied.”

She had an aversion to seeing men and women walking arm-in-arm and decreed that Knutsford’s pavements should be wide enough for only one person.

 

 

South Manchester/edge Cheshire house prices are very expensive imo.  Of course you can get a Stockport terrace for £100K.  Never fancied that traffic in from North Manchester, and again prices/values are quite sharp.

 

10 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

Never liked Manchester, It only really grew due to the Manchester ship canal.  It's famous now for 2 football teams.  

Pointless place.

Built by Manchester to take away some powers from Liverpool, is my understanding.  To get around taxes big Liverpool (finance and insurance) wanted on US cotton imports.  Might be wrong.  Not convinced by recent theories to start more coordination between Manchester and Liverpool, for wider growth.   Manpool.  (or Livchester as some people quizzed from Liverpool on North West tonight offered if it was forced upon them).  Manpool, from same guy who coined the term BRICs.  

Also..

What's so great about Northampton then Count?

[frye]

7 hours ago, 24 year mortgage 8itch said:

"You're so like Manchester, you've got Strangeways, so don't go Altrincham.

- John Shuttleworth.

But if you're like Manchester don't you Cheetham Me. If I rush home to find you've been in Whalley's Range, I wont be pleased.

So I wouldn't say Manchester is dying yet, it's still snow-balling. The feeling I've got in recent years and where I think Manchester is going wrong, like everywhere else, is that it's trying too hard to be like London rather than just being Manchester.

Tell me about it, areas like Didsbury / Chorlton more so.

 

[stormymonday_2011]

10 hours ago, rollover said:

A hotel in Manchester racked up 266 'terrible' ratings

Pictures show the Merchant Hotel in Manchester that guests on TripAdvisor have described as 'something out of a horror movie'. A single room with a shower and sink but no toilet costs £42 - not including an extra £2 for towels. Guests are forced to use a shared toilet at the end of the corridor. Dated decor and old fashioned carpets, disgusting chairs layered in grime, one reporter for the Manchester Evening News - who visited the hotel to see if the reviews were as bad as reported - said it even crunched at the touch. Stained walls and cracks around the bed from what looked like previous water damage and more stains and cracks around the main stairwell. 

Guests also have to endure exiting onto a back street filled with wheelie bins, spilled litter and the foul smell of urine. Added to that there is graffiti on the door and one of the information boxes inside contained  just one very crumpled and dirty looking sheet of paper detailing room prices. Daily Mail

That looks like the Merchants off Piccadilly. I stayed there a few time in the 1980s when attending  courses run by the Inland Revenue in Manchester as it was handy for the training centre and was cheap enough to leave plenty of money from your nightly civil service allowance to spend boozing. It was a bit of a dive even back then. The sheets on the bed were so thin I managed to put my feet right through them. The owner at that time was a mate of the legendary northern drag queen and club owner Frank 'Foo Foo' Lammar, and as gay as the proverbial picnic basket. All the staff were nice boys apart from the couple of women who used to serve the breakfasts.  BTW Frank Foo Foo Lammar was an ex boxer and could look after himself even in the tough Manchester pub scene of that era. In the early 1980s parts of the city such as Hulme were as rough as any part of the UK. Despite the fact it could be a bit scary I always liked the place. I hope it has completely lost that rather unique northern vibe it had back then.

Edited February 21, 2017 by stormymonday_2011

[stormymonday_2011]

2 hours ago, Venger said:

 

What's so great about Northampton then Count?

The "Hell's Mouth" bus station but they blew it up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-31889521

Edited February 21, 2017 by stormymonday_2011

[SarahBell]

Manchester throws up new flats at every visit. Vile towers of horrors, that much be empty ... how many have they built over the last 10 years? 250k flats?

[reddog]

My personal experience is that when it came to spunking money on regional cities in the New Labour years, Manchester was always first in the queue.

 

They have done well out of things like the BBC and commonwealth games, and have raised their profile through football and music.

 

Only been there once, for a course in the early 2000s, I take the point about the centre being spread out.  To be honest had a couple of nights out and didn't see what the big deal was.

Edited February 21, 2017 by reddog

[999house]

23 hours ago, Will! said:

I'm not sure whether this should be in the England - North West forum, but I thought I'd start it off here.

I'm waiting on a civil service job in Manchester.  The department has offices in Manchester and London, but it is looking to recruit new staff only in Manchester because of the cost of office space in London and, because this is the public sector, to try to create employment in an unemployment blackspot.  Other than those two reasons there is no inherent reason for the department to have an office in Manchester.

I like Manchester, but I think it never found a replacement for its original reason for becoming a city, textiles, and it is slowly dying.  Public sector employment will keep it going for a bit longer but there's nothing on the horizon to reverse the decline.

When the commercial property market in London reaches the bottom of its crash the difference between the cost of office space in London and Manchester will be much much smaller than it is now.  At this point I expect my job to be moved to London.  I'm not from Manchester so my employment there won't make much difference to local unemployment.

I thought about buying a flat near the office in Manchester, but it looks to me like when the economy crashes Manchester could face an almost Detroit-style collapse.

Any thoughts?

Er no. Manchester is fine. Its not super wealthy, but neither is it Detroit. There seems to be alot of property speculation though. Flats and apartment wise.

[scb]

I like Manchester. Stayed there for a long weekend last year with friends and found it nice enough and worked there a bit recently too. My work often involved staying in London and frankly most of what I've seen there (Borehamwood, Wembley, Acton and Hammersmith mainly) and I'd pick Manchester over London every time. I'll be honest though, I really don't "get" the fuss about London. Work I guess which makes me lucky that I don't have to live on London just to work in London from time to time.

[Will!]

On 21/02/2017 at 8:13 AM, hotairmail said:

In terms of the related 'location', I will always cite Seattle. A highly successful city located next to the Pacific ocean on one side and a vast empty hinterland to the other. How on earth did it get successful? Government action basically. They located Boeing there and provided huge subsidies. A supply network located nearby. It attracted the brightest and eventually all sorts of new businesses sprung up from Starbucks to vanti-virus software.

Interesting comparison, especially with the later rise of high tech companies despite not having a university of note (which Manchester does).

[spyguy]

1 hour ago, Will! said:

Interesting comparison, especially with the later rise of high tech companies despite not having a university of note (which Manchester does).

Bill Gates Dad moved there.

Bill Gates set up MS - probably with some tax releif; MS was orignally in Texas.

Boing carried on. MS got big. Amazon moved their to nick MS staff.

 

[zugzwang]

It's not just Manchester that's dying on its 4rse. The entire UK is a living fossil.

[sPinwheel]

Manchester? A hive of scum and villany.

[jiltedjen]

It was standing on the balcony of a flat in central Manchester looking out at all the new builds of flats at night when I first realised there will be a HPC. 

corridors empty no lights on at night, endless slave boxes stacked on each other.

someone is going to make some huge losses. With such a low level of occupancy these hulks of mal-investments will not be maintained properly.

 

[Greg Bowman]

18 hours ago, scb said:

(Borehamwood, Wembley, Acton and Hammersmith mainly)

Seriously ? and as you can see on this thread I am a fan of Manchester. There is a little more to London than the above...

[sPinwheel]

33 minutes ago, jiltedjen said:

It was standing on the balcony of a flat in central Manchester looking out at all the new builds of flats at night when I first realised there will be a HPC. 

corridors empty no lights on at night, endless slave boxes stacked on each other.

someone is going to make some huge losses. With such a low level of occupancy these hulks of mal-investments will not be maintained properly.

 

Perhaps they were all sleeping.

[Hectors House]

On 2/21/2017 at 8:13 AM, hotairmail said:

 

Yes, 'purpose'. That was said in the OP and is often cited by Londoners....."the point of these northern cities has gone, we buy our stuff from China now. They're in the wrong place."

 

 

 

1

You could be talking about most of South Wales there!

[Hectors House]

On 2/21/2017 at 4:33 PM, ubuntu said:

obviously you don't frequent north Mnachester then, is full of them traditionally.Born and brought up in 80s Manchester, couldn't wait to get out.

A lot of residential areas of Manchester make Marsh Farm in Luton look really posh!

[Riedquat]

16 hours ago, jiltedjen said:

It was standing on the balcony of a flat in central Manchester looking out at all the new builds of flats at night when I first realised there will be a HPC. 

corridors empty no lights on at night, endless slave boxes stacked on each other.

someone is going to make some huge losses. With such a low level of occupancy these hulks of mal-investments will not be maintained properly.

But we keep getting told there's a lack of supply and absolutely anything getting built is great!