Living in Manchester is both a joyous privilege and a profound hassle. The city has a proud scientific, industrial, political and cultural heritage, but it also has a lamentable inability to get over itself. One minute, Alan Turings notebook is selling for over a million dollars in America, the next minute Bez is on the news gurning on about democraceh, and everyone south of Stockport is laughing at us. For every pioneering genius, we seem to have two utter plant pots who cant order a pizza without mentioning the Hacienda. Yes, Deansgate Locks on a Friday night is a bit terrible and yes, there are probably a few too many shopping trolleys in the ship canal, but there's some good stuff too, we just don't celebrate it properly. Manchester is at once cocksure and self conscious, a modern city weighed down by its cultural past. Suffrage, computing, vegetarianism, atom splitting, code breaking, hot pot, even the Doberman - a dog that wouldn't exist without the Manchester terrier - there's something Mancunian about all of them. But when you live in Manchester, you're too worried about being persistently drizzled on to remember that the place you live is actually ace. And not just because of some bands and a football team. So in the spirit of old school Mancunian pessimism, here are 14 other reasons you hate to love the place.
Freelance writer, contributing to The Huffington Post and a variety of blogs. Banned from Crufts, inventor of the Gareth Bale salary outrage calculator and one-time consumer affairs advocate. Resident of Manchester, UK.
