David Ottewell: On Holiday, But Still Filing Casi Copy

David Ottewell blogged from a distant airport about East Manchester's controversial on-off casino. Apparently Simon Ashley spotted a story in Building Magazine saying that Manchester would be offered a government department or agency instead.

(a) Don't think Building magazine had any sort of exclusive on that one, and in fact the Manchester Evening News and the Council have been campaigning for Whitehall jobs for years. And Brown's been promising them too. So far we've had MI5. At a hush hush location.

(b) Richard Leese and Sir Howard will want the casino AND the government jobs. Not sure a government office anchors a retail and hotel development all that well actually ... see Sheffield Moorfoot for some evidence of Stalinist architecture and fairly shabby retail developments.

(c) When will Simon apologise for his failure to control Leech and the Lib Dem party in the HoP as he promised? and

(d) Just what is Simon's point anyway?

Blogging will be light until teatime today.

UPDATE: The missing link from Davis' story is here and that drew a link to the Building story in a comment.