Bonfire night and the American electorate has just made a massive bonfire of one of its biggest historical prejudices by electing its first African-American President and I want to add my congratulations to Barack Obama on his amazing achievement.
Some big things in Manchester last week not least the finalisation of the Transport Innovation Proposals that will be the subject of a referendum beginning later this month. This is a package. We can't cherry pick. It's either £3billion pounds of investment in public transport, investment on an unprecedented scale, partly funded by a peak-time, Monday to Friday, one-way only congestion charge... or nothing. And nothing means nothing for a long time. On Friday last I was regularly asked what is plan B. There is no plan B, but those urging you to vote No don't even have a plan A.
Yesterday's diary went regeneration, equality, culture, waste, culture, higher education, culture interspersed on a regular basis with housing and inevitably the Transport Innovation Fund.
Today is Executive Committee where items for consideration include redevelopment prospects for various parts of the City Centre including the complete replacement of the awful Ramada block on Deansgate. As I've said before, it's even more important in the current economic climate to maintain momentum, and the Ramada proposal is also a reminder of just how long it can take to bring major projects to fruition as the redevelopment of this corner of the City Centre is one of the outstanding parts of the 1996 post-bomb masterplan.
Last week I promised to return to accounts of boring meetings but I'm going to have to renege on that, as so far this week everything has been pretty interesting. Well I think so.
Next week I'm going to return to those accounts of the seemingly endless and tedious sounding meetings I spend lots of time attending but today I have one of my more interesting regular meetings plus a very much lighter event (apart from the impact on my waistline).
Yesterday was our 8-weekly meeting of the full Council. Any observer with the misfortune to be sitting in would have spent a couple of hours blissfully unaware of the global economic crisis or would have assumed that Manchester was somehow immune from it as we meandered through a number of remarkably parochial debates. Fortunately away from the excitement of the Council Chamber the Council isn't ignoring the gathering economic gloom and on Tuesday we had a regular meeting of our version of an economic emergency committee, and yesterday another group met focussing particularly on the housing market's woes.
The high spot of today will be the homecoming for the Manchester and North West linked athletes who took part in the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games earlier this year. Come along to Albert Square at 6pm tonight and there will be an opportunity to see around 40 of the athletes who took part in the games with such phenomenal success.
Party conference season over, Manchester City over the blue moon, nights drawing in, and even a few complaints about its absence so time to return to the blog. Of course the big event of the autumn isn't going to be football but the chance for citizens all over Greater Manchester to vote on whether or not we should proceed with our proposals to invest £3,000 million in public transport partially funded by a limited congestion charge or not. A stark choice but one you can only play a part in if you are registered to vote on the new electoral register, so if you haven't registered yet, do it now.
Association of Greater Manchester Authorities Executive this morning and a decision on the proposal I put a month ago for a county wide referendum on our proposals to improve transport in the city-region including of course the introduction of a congestion charge in 2013. I'm delighted that all ten leaders agree to the referendum, to be counted by district, and the final decision on whether to proceed requiring the support of at least seven of the Greater Manchester Councils.
The blog of the leader of Manchester City Council, Councillor Richard Leese.