Recently in Salford Category

Regular readers of this blog will recall the good-natured exchange I had with Howard Bernstein at MIPIM over the Enterprise Zones (10 March 2011). I still intend to furnish Sir Howard with his (highly alliterative) "empirical evidence of the efficacy of Enterprise Zones", but Dr Evans is on holiday right now (as a cheeky person quipped earlier today: "The President's Brian is Missing.") so I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll keep you posted.

But Sir Howard certainly continues to excite strong emotions. On Tuesday, Manchester Evening News carried an hilarious interview with Barbara Spicer, chief executive of Salford city council, where she explains how she has become incredibly close to her Manchester city council counterpart (Sir Howard Bernstein, of course), and describes their relationship as "almost like that of a mother and daughter". As she says (with apparently genuine affection): "It's a little like you'd say, 'Mum, what do you think about this?'."

The article is headed "Howard Bernstein is like my mum", which is a bit of a shame really, as the piece is, in all other respects, exemplary. Well, the mind boggles! Ms Spicer gets us into this unfortunate mire of maternalism (which I bet she is truly regretting now) in her attempt to explain that there wasn't a natural partnership with Manchester when she took the Salford job over four years ago. She says: "I'm not saying that the politicians weren't talking, but in organisational terms, there wasn't any real partnership. And to be honest, I think there was some kind of competition. Very early on, I made it clear that any competition with Manchester was over. In terms of developing the core of the conurbation, we take a very singular view and that is one of the things that we will look at in the round: we discuss which sites we are going to bring forward."

Rocked up to the Mishcon de Reya pre-MIPIM party last night where I did cane it a little (and am suffering rather as a result today; when will I ever learn? Don't answer that). Clever old Susan Freeman ("Oi!" she would say at this point: "Less of the 'old'!") had out-blinged herself, if anything. It was rather a spectacular affair yet again this year, with the extraordinary mix of establishment and slightly more, shall we say, outré characters from the industry, that Susan assembles in a sort of crazy creative mash-up.  Well, it all works.
 
I did my normal stunt of going around being very rude to people to see what would happen. Peter Bill and I had a bit of a giggle about him becoming a pimp for certain Tory politicians (well, it's true: he's meeting Tories at breakfast, lunch and dinner). Mathieu Le Noir and I had a bit of a giggle about all our old workmates at CBRE - as you do.  Andrew Pratt and I also had a bit of a giggle about whether he could continue to body-swerve MIPIM next week (my money is on him being there, you see if I'm not right) and what will Andrew do next?  Blimey!  The gorgeous Pratt has a right range of impressive offers on the table (although hardly surprising really, a bloke of his ability). Met the lovely Mark Collins, the new wunderkind for CBRE residential (he's got his work cut out there, I reckon, but he certainly seemed Up-For-It, although I told him he wouldn't last long at CBRE if he continued to drink elderflower juice). Had a giggle and a cuddle with Adam Gaymer (bless) who is as irrepressible as ever.
 
Truly wonderful to meet David Izett for the very first time, although knowing John Izett as well as I do, it did feel as if I'd known David all my life. And I could have picked him out from the crowd as being John's brother, they are so alike. (It's always a little double-edged this, my sister Fiona and I are very alike, both to look at and in our mannerisms, and it does spook folk a little, including the two of us!).

This afternoon we were given the ministerial statement about regeneration; Grant Shapps and Andrew Stunell were in Salford today and have been explaining how the coalition government's policies create a framework for action.
 
I was about to get a bit angsty about the fact that the statement is the shortest statement we've seen in 30 years, until some smarty-pants pointed out that the regeneration sector is rather used to screeds of verbiage and policy guidance but it hasn't actually always inculcated a culture of real action or delivery. So that put me back in my box.

And, certainly, when UKR began calling for the government to set out its plans for regeneration, we had in mind something like the old-fashioned government white papers (we even wrote our own "Not the white paper" - see blog 11 October 2011 - and jolly good it was too) but we now realise that we were still partly stuck in the remains of our top-down mindset. 

So it is action, not words. Dr Clever-Knickers Evans has a new word for this government: WYSIWYAG (or What You Saw Is What You Are Getting) and it has to be said that the regeneration statement is simply a pulling-together of all the relevant strands from the recent suite of white papers and putting them into a one-stop (forgive me coining one of our old terms) document.

No surprises, no rabbits out of hats (well almost none), no bells and whistles; the statement is a simple laying out of the basic tools that we now have and the resources available. Yes, we would have preferred to see a doubling of the Regional Growth Fund but we didn't really expect it to happen (and nor should anyone else have done so if they had been listening to ministerial pronouncements for the last nine months). And we are still expecting some further hooks in the Budget for Growth on 23 March (note to chancellor: may we have EZ-TIF? Pretty please).