The Rising Superpower

I have never seen anything like this in Albert Square.

I arrived early for my meetings in Manchester, so wandered up from Oxford Road to see what was happening. Lots of young Chinese men and women - mainly students here studying I guess - waiting in anticipation for the arrival of President Xi Jinping and his entourage.

After my morning meetings, I wandered up again. It was much noisier. The Free Tibet/Falun Gong crowd were trying to make quite a racket. And at the other end off the Square GMP had sealed off things to isolate the anti-austerity crew who were here to bang the gongs against David Cameron and George Osborne.

Two extras - the most colourful person I could blip. And my favourite - amongst all the cacophony the men working on track laying for the second city crossing seemed absolutely oblivious to everything going on around them. They have a job to finish, after all.