From time to time, I’m invited to lecture to visiting delegations from China, usually in London. This week, I was asked to go to Manchester to give a couple of such lectures and I agreed since I was brought in Manchester (I left when I was 23) and still have relatives there.<\/p>\n
So I went up the day before and caught up with my step mother Marjorie. She only gets to the cinema if i take her, so we went to see a film she was keen to view: the wonderful “Mr Turner” directed by Mike Leigh and starring Timothy Spall. This is a work which is set deservedly to win many awards and we saw it at the independent Cornerhouse cinema<\/a>\u00a0[see my review here<\/a>]. Afterwards we had a really good meal at an Italian restaurant called “Giorgio”<\/a>.<\/p>\n I stayed overnight in the same central Manchester hotel where the Chinese delegation was staying and where I would be giving my lectures next day. The Britannia Hotel<\/a> was opened in 1982 in a building dating back to 1858 when it was the Lancashire cotton industry’s most famous warehouse.<\/p>\n The following morning, I met the Chinese delegation from the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervsion (I’ve actually been to Hangzhous, one of the 15 cities I’ve visited on three trips to China). \u00a0My two lectures were entitled “The British Political System” and “The Regulation Of Markets In The British Economy”.<\/p>\n I encouraged them to ask questions and I was pleased that they did because, when I first started such lectures to Chinese delegations, they were reluctant to raise issues with me. I am always respectful of China on such occasions, but I do politely point out some of the challenges that China is going to face if it is to reconcile its free market approach to the economy and its strict political control of society and I highlight some of the inconsistencies in China’s current role in the international community.<\/p>\n I spent my second evening in Manchester staying with my younger brother Ralph and his family. That evening, i took Ralph and my niece – 11 year old Saskia [see her latest poem here<\/a>] \u00a0– for a meal at a good local restaurant called “Croma”<\/a>.<\/p>\n Next morning, Ralph and Saskia took me back into central Manchester. In his car, my brother played some of a new CD of jazz music: “Animalia” by Mammal Hands<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0I liked this so much that, back at home, i ordered it from Amazon.<\/p>\n