Third meeting of the shadow Health and Well-Being Board this morning. Subject to legislation, it won't come in to formal existence until 2013, but both the Council and the various Health bodies represented see real value in using the board as a vehicle for better collaboration between services to improve the health of Manchester people. A lot of time is going in to agreeing purpose, vision, key priorities and it's essential that we do that to ensure that we really are all pulling in the same direction. Some people round the table are quite used to partnership working at a strategic level. For others it is a new experience.

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Meet Ian Blatchford, the Director of the National Science Museum this morning. Next year, Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry ( MoSI ) will become part of the national museum, a move that is very much welcomed by the City Council. Science, including such notable figures as Joule and Dalton, has been integral to the development of Manchester as a great city. MoSI has a great story to tell and in telling it can not only boost visitor numbers to the city but inspire a new generation of Mancunians to become scientific pioneers.

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My periodic visit to St Helen's Town Hall this morning for a meeting of the Regional Leaders' Board which I currently chair. Marie Rimmer, the Leader, and Carole Hudson, the Chief Executive, of St Helen's always give us a warm welcome, and today is no exception with mince pies to go with the pre-meeting tea and coffee. If regions are dead you wouldn't have known it from today's agenda, with a number of significant items on the agenda. The first dealt with Atlantic Gateway. This is an umbrella term for a number of major economic development projects in the Ship Canal corridor. Today we consider the business plan and delivery plan for the next period, and get a very positive introduction from Geoff Muirhead, Atlantic Gateway chair, who makes it clear that they are going to focus on a small number of priorities where they can make a real difference, Northern ( formerly Manchester ) Hub and Port Salford being the ones with most relevance to Manchester.

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Full Council today. The refurbishment of the Town Hall extension means the Council Chamber is out of use until 2013. In the interim Council meetings are being held in the Great Hall. It's a beautiful room but even with a temporary PA System installed the acoustics are such that it's very difficult to hear what is being said in many parts of the Hall. They're not the most riveting meetings you could ever go to but even so lack of audability isn't really ideal for open democracy.

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Had our four-weekly Executive Members meeting with senior officers today concentrating on where we are up to with the 2011-13 budget. The meeting would have been on Wednesday but was put back to today to avoid the Pensions strike which I talked about in the last post. A bonus of the deferred meeting has been its saved me from a trip to Liverpool or rather saved me from the trip back. The return journey would have been around tea time and on a Friday that would inevitably have meant cramming on to an overcrowded train with little chance of a seat even if I'd got one booked, an experience I've already had this morning with a ludicrously overcrowded tram from Crumpsall into town.

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The 99 funds which make up the The Local Government Pension Scheme, of which Manchester is a member, are together the biggest pension scheme in the country, holding more than £120 billion in assets on behalf of its four million members. The LGPS provides salary-related, defined benefits, which are not dependent upon investment performance. As it is a statutory funded pension scheme, it is a secure pension arrangement. Currently, the LGPS income from investments and contributions is between £4-5 billion more than it pays out. As a major shareholder in British businesses, property and regeneration, the LGPS is a secure and sustainable scheme, with enduring viability.

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Probably the shortest 'ordinary' meeting ever of the Council's Executive Committee this morning. Last time's bumper agenda was followed by an exceedingly thin one, though it still contained some significant items like £10m added to the capital programme to make some inroads in to the demand for additional primary school places.

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It's the press launch of next year's 10th Great Manchester Run this morning. Between the first run in 2003 and next years event it will have quadrupled in size with forty thousand people taking part in the main 10k run. It's also grown in scope with a number of junior runs and the world's best sprinters hurtling down Deansgate on the track that will appear for the fourth time next year.

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The day starts just round the corner from home at Carmel Court. This is sheltered accommodation provided by Manchester Jewish Housing Association, but they are planning to move to another site, still in Crumpsall. I'm there to meet the prospective purchasers of the Holland Road site and to find out what they intend to do with it. Then it's on my bike and a rather breezy ride into the Town Hall. Is it my imagination or is it a lot windier than it used to be.

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If I hadn't already declared my hand last week, I might have called this 11111111 but then my pedantic friend in France would probably want to change it to 1100111111 or something equally incomprehensible. It will be a hundred years before we have a repeat so for most of us it will be the only 11111111 in our lifetime so I hope it was memorable for you.

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