Little Manchester

Yesterday's low productivity on this blog was due to my being in Manchester, floating round the fringes of the Labour conference. The highlight was a poorly-attended yet powerfully stirring debate about youth, gangs and knife crime organised by the think tank Kids Count and addressed by, among others Home Office minister Vernon Coaker MP and Jennifer Blake of the Eternal Life Support Centre in Southwark. The latter was impressive, the former surprisingly candid about the government's failings. I've turned round a short Cif piece about the event, which has just gone live. More notes from the conference to come. For now, though, a little light chauvinism. One of my sons is at university in Manchester. I saw him last night and asked him what he thought of the place compared with London. "Small," he said. That's my boy.