a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in

Friday 18th June 2010

What made manchester greater was a combination of a moist climate, imperialism, routes to market like the manchester ship canal and a sustained knack for innovation and marketing, which somewhere along the line was lost to profit-taking, brain drain, an inability to see and seize change and inevitable decline. A crucial ingredient was the existence of an elite that had social capital, money-making zeal, civic pride, responsibility and an ethos to build a just and prosperous society in its own image. This was a central point of my speech to the city’s st james club.