The Mancunian Way: From punk to the pandemic

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Here's the Mancunian Way for today:

Hello and welcome,

I’m back after a lovely week off. I spent it first, watching Neighbours: The Celebration Tour at The Bridgewater Hall - where I rambled incoherently to patient soap stars - and then in the capital, where I angered a Londoner by standing still.

Thanks so much to Adam Maidment and Tom Molloy for taking over newsletter duties in my absence.

In today’s edition, we’ll be looking at chief reporter Neal Keeling’s piece about Andy Spinoza. He’s one of Manchester’s best-known journalists and a PR guru who says the city from ‘punk to the pandemic’ has had an extraordinary transformation that is ‘underappreciated’ in London.

We’ll also be talking about the new powers that look set to be announced for Greater Manchester in this week's budget and the junior doctors' strike. Let’s begin.

There is, perhaps understandably, often a fatigue which comes with the mention of The Hacienda. Plenty of Mancs are sick of hearing about it. Especially given the breadth of music which came out of the city before and after those ‘Madchester’ days.

But journalist Andy Spinoza makes a key point in his interview with chief reporter Neal Keeling. He says the nightclub triggered a renaissance which blew away the city's malaise and led to a liberalisation of the city's archaic interpretation of the licensing laws - which in turn enticed entrepreneurs and, crucially, wads of government cash.

In his new book Manchester Unspun, he talks about the ‘fatal post-industrial tailspin’ of the 1970s and how