Sheffield to Manchester: powerhouse cities that may as well be joined by a horse-and-cart track
In the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing, which killed 22 people, a light emerged.
It was a poem by Tony Walsh. This Is The Place. I hope it is recited each and every morning in primary school assemblies across Manchester, for it is full of pride, hope and togetherness. Each stanza knitted together with Mancunian wool, woven by Mancunian hands in Mancunian mills.
It is an ode to the city’s people: ‘some people are born here, some people are drawn here.’ It is both a comforting arm around those who call Manchester home, and a defiant up-yours to those who mean it harm. It goes:
Our inventions are legends. There’s nowt we can’t make, and so we make brilliant music
We make brilliant bands
We make goals that make souls leap from seats in the stands
And we make things from steel
And we make things from cotton
And we make people laugh, take the mick summat rotten
And we make you at home
And we make you feel welcome...
And, do you know what, we can admire those things, this side of the Pennines, can’t we? Why?
Because there’s music here, too, and plenty to do.
Cotton and steel, perhaps not so much,
Now finance and tech computers and such
Manchester, Leeds … Sheffield, too. We’ve more in common, me an’ you
United in Sheffield, United in Leeds,
United in Manchester who’ve slipped down the league
Rivalries, yes, but common ground, too
Two passes apart, though, we can’t make it through
Woodhead and Snake, you couldn’t make it up
Road ahead closed, they’ve sold us a pup
Millions of people a stone’s throw apart
How do you get there? By horse-and-cart
I’m faced with a day of crossing the moors
Two hours there, possibly more
Crawling through drizzle, haze and fuel fog
Seriously mate, it’d be quicker to jog
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Enough of the poetry from you, Mitchinson, I hear you say. You’re not Tony bloody Harrison. You’re not wrong.
But I think you get a sense of where I’m coming from on this one; Manchester and Sheffield are not simply proud northern towns, full of pluck and wit and folks who take no … nonsense.
Manchester and Sheffield are powerhouse cities, 30 miles apart. Wonderful places, teeming with good people, great businesses, famous research institutions and manufacturing beacons … yet they may as well not be joined at all for the prospect of traversing those moors for a meeting fills us with dread. Spare a thought for those poor souls who must make the journey daily. It is a soul-destroying, needlessly attritional chore, which is described by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, in our Saturday Special: Transport & Connectivity package in tomorrow’s Yorkshire Post, as ‘ridiculous.’ He goes further … don’t miss it. On the app, online or in the paper.
In conversation with the Prime Minister, as well as South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard and the Mayor of Greater Manchester Bev Craig, we turn the microscope of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper on the economic opportunity of a generation. As chances to unlock good growth in every postcode go, for the North of England: this is the one.
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