Manchester fun happens thick and fast at this autumnal time of the year. First we had the Halloween Howler over at Clayton Vale. Lots and lots of people (we believe well over 2,000) and they seemed to be having a great time.

Then over here we had the Heaton Park fireworks last night. Yet again the hordes that came to watch gave us no trouble. The only slight downside was that the vast traffic jam meant I didn’t manage to make it to my first Pirates of Penzance Rehearsal of the year at UMIST (or whatever, it’s called now it’s part of the University of Manchester again).

And if bonfire night is over then it must be Remembrance Sunday closely followed by Christmas! Or at least plenty of Christmas light switching on, up and down the country.

Here in Manchester there’s going to be some fun over at Sportcity on the 19th November to celebrate the grand light switching on.

I believe there’ll be all manner of good things, including craft workshops for children to make Christmas decorations for us doting parents. A brass band (please let them be reasonable!). Of course hot drinks and mince pies(and these are free too).

Plus a 1 kilometre Santa Claus fancy dress fun run, which sounds very sweaty and beardy. For those not inclined to sweat it for Christmas you can go on some fairground rides or be entertained by a motley band of street entertainers

It kicks off at 5:15 and finishes all too soon at 6:30. I understand you can get in through Gate 11 on Rowsley street off Ashton New Road in soon to be fun-filled Beswick.

If you find the lights at Albert Square a bit too much of a crush this might be just the thing to go to. Try it out and let us know what you think!

I’m a true Manchester supporter.

That means I support any Manchester endeavour, unless it’s just plain stupid, or crazy.

As chance would have it Kay had won a pair of tickets to the Manchester City versus Portsmouth game for last Sunday.

She had thought about going herself with our eldest daughter. Luckily sense and a low boredom threshold kicked in and she decided that I might like them.

So I rang Rob Baker who’s a keen City fan and organised for us to go to the match.

Luckily my mother in law lives fairly close to the Stadium so we dropped Rob’s car off there (so it would be relatively secure) and walked off to watch the match.

The weather was fantastic, a lovely clear blue sky and just the right temperature.

The tickets were for B row right at the front but Rob and I decided we’d be better off standing at the back of the stadium as we’d get a better view of the whole ground. And obviously from there we had a fantastic view as City romped away with 6 goals to nil.

I wouldn’t say City had it all their own way but by the time they’d scored 4 they were looking as though they could score a few more. Which of course they did. The football became more open and flowing and they began to rush around the opposing team.

I wont go into a kick by kick description of the game, suffice to say that City’s new owners and new manager must be very pleased with their team.

Rob and I had been standing at the back for 3/4 of the game and then suddenly we were told that we were not to stand there anymore.

Which was strange as there were others standing there. We pointed out that our seats were right at the front and we’d disturb people going to them and in all probability someone was already sat there so we’d have an argument about who should be sitting there.

Obviously we’d eventually have won the argument but we might have missed a goal. Rather like I missed the third goal when I went to the toilet to avoid the need to go down to our seats! Still I saw the replay.

We stayed pretty much until the end when we were moved on from standing at the back again in a different part of the ground. Ah well.

I do like the stadium and I enjoyed the football. The only downside was being told to move on very late in the match. If we’d been told to go at the very beginning, or just before half-time I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. However, being told so late in the match interrupted our enjoyment and if we’d started trying to get to our “correct” seats we’d have disrupted a lot more people.

Anyway, a big thanks to Manchester City for providing the tickets as a prize and thanks to Manchester Leisure for making sure they arrived in time for the game.

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I like the Place Hotel. Formerly an enormous warehouse next to Piccadilly Station it took many months to dry out before the developer could begin converting it into an apartment hotel. The hotel front is on Ducie Street and now includes a restaurant.

Piccadilly Station’s covered platforms can be seen from the top of The Place hotel where there are some rather delightful penthouses.

In its earlier days I went along to a Simply Networking session (business networking meetings run by Mark Greenwood) which was at The Place hotel.

The then marketing manager, Clare Johnson, did a presentation on the hotel and gave out some nice little cameras that we all started to flash around. I used mine to take some photographs of the hotel and of some of the people at Simply Networking.

In fact all the photos on this post were taken courtesy of The Place’s own camera. The picture to the right shows another view from the penthouses at The Place. It’s towards East Manchester and in the distance you can see The City of Manchester Stadium – home to Manchester City. Speaking of which,  good luck Sven, and also to new incumbent Mark Hughes!

And of course photographs during a networking meeting wouldn’t be complete without a photo of the organiser, Mark Greenwood.

So the final photograph shows a group of Simpler Networkers with Mark grinning away on the right of the photo.

Just to explain a little further about The Place hotel. It seems as though it was originally developed as apartments that people could buy, because it was so close to the city centre.

And renting the apartments out was meant to be a short-term measure until they were all sold.

In the end though The Place is in the right place for a lot of business and professional people (close to the communications network and Manchester’s city centre). So it is doing well as a hotel.

And to round it off there’s a nice roomy underground car park!

So the “Enjoy England” campaign is presenting information about lots of cultural stuff going on in England under the banner of Culture08.

Meanwhile in sunny Manchester (although my fingers are dropping off from the cold) we’re getting ready to have a huge set of sporting fixtures that should help to propel us back to the top for sport, or the near the top if you count the Olympics!

So without further ado you can check out the fixtures at the Manchester World Sport08 site.

There’s a whole boatload of information there.

Meanwhile here’s a brief summary (with links) of the sporting events we’re getting:

I’m serious.

Let’s get Manchester onto the board of the World Monopoly game.

Go to the Monopoly Site and nominate Manchester (UK) to get onto the board. Be careful because the USA has a few Manchester’s too.

Manchester’s not on the shortlist but when enough of us nominate it we’ve got a chance of being one of two wild card cities that will be added onto the board.

After all we’ve Manchester United and Manchester City, both of which have huge following around the Uk. And Manchester United has a vast army around the world. So all you United and City fans getting voting.

Also all you Manchester University, Manchester Metropolitan University and UMIST graduates vote! Come on click on over to the Monopoly Site now, get registered and vote.

And everyone from around Greater Manchester too – just click on over to the Monopoly Site and nominate Manchester.

By the way the site has a pile of Monopoly trivia, including the total number of green houses built and how the sets were used during World War II to help escaping soldiers.

A few weeks ago he was reviled. And now he is a hero, well in Manchester.

It is amazing what 3 weeks does and 9 points.

I thought he was a con artist, but if he can do the double over the rags then he has something.

Of course United were without Rooney and Ronaldo who helped each other get over the defeat in their own particular way.

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When the Manchester Evening News reports on a leak of a poll conducted by NOP I was interested to find that the leak shows that 57% agreed with the congestion charge when it was related to the ?3 billion cash for public transport.

There’s lies, damned lies and Statistics. And in particular statistics relating to polls.

When I was doing my MSc in Management Sciences at UMIST we were shown just how easy it is to manipulate statistics by emphasising the questions a particular way.

I’m going to wait to see how the question was phrased to see whether it made a difference to the answer.

However, I have a few thoughts before the report is revealed on Monday:

1. Were the people interviewed living in the city centre and therefore completely unaffected by the charges?
2. Were the people interviewed students and again completely unaffected by the charges?
3. Were the people interviewed regular rush hour drivers who use Manchester during the rush hour?
4. Did the people involved use public transport regularly?
5. Were the people interviewed Manchester residents?
6. Did the people interviewed have large incomes?

Does this poll now make the bid “acceptable” to the councils involved in setting the charge? And the answer is of course it does!

But if the poll asked loaded questions the result is not a fair reflection of what the public believes. But it’s now given the councils the ammunition they were looking for to move forward and slap on another road tax.

And quite honestly I object to the councils spending  vast sums doing research, advertising the concepts and softening us up to accept the charge.

What happens next is the councils decide that instead of ?5 they’ll charge ?4 to make us relieved and so we think, “oh, that’s not as bad as ?5, we can go with that.”

When all the time none of us ever wanted congestion charging in the first place.

Update on Congestion Charging Poll:

Apparently NOP used random phone numbers across Manchester councils.

So if they’ve phoned 100 people in Bury, all of whom work in Bury and will never cross the congestion charge boundary those people will be happy for the congestion charge to be there because it will mean better public transport overall.

So I hope they asked everyone if they commute into Manchester during rush hour everyday first…what’s the betting?

Sven Goran Erikson‘s reign at Manchester City started with a win.So it was Doncaster, it is still a win and with Manchester City you cannot be sure even if the opposition is in a lower division or two or even three.

Eriksson seems to have made the right noises, signings and has not bought Keiran Richardson.

Dawn of a new era, I had not dared so much a few weeks ago.