Up until a week ago, the chances of a North West city adopting a governance model that was being promoted by the coalition government appeared remote. After all, Manchester and Liverpool have council’s with large Labour majorities, and both had indicated that they were likely to campaign against the establishment of elected mayors in their cities. The chances of any idea wrapped up in blue paper being supported in a referendum in either of these Labour strongholds was as likely as Carlos Tevez being named as Player of the Season by City fans in April.

Then, news broke that Liverpool’s leadership had been negotiating a ‘city deal’ with the government through the winter, and agreement had been reached. The city will adopt an elected mayor model, without a referendum, next week. With this transformational move, Liverpool will benefit from an initial injection of some £130m. The new mayor, who will be elected in May, will also have powers to select ‘mayoral enterprise zones’, and be given responsibility of huge swathes of land and assets once owned by the Regional Development Agency and the Housing Corporation. Overall, some estimate that the package could be worth up to £1Billion!

Downtown Liverpool in Business has long argued for the adoption of an elected mayor for a city that, though much improved during the past decade, still suffers from the plethora of agencies involved in its governance, and parochial sub- regional politics that only this week saw talks about progressing the city-region Local Enterprise Partnership collapse. Downtown Liverpool members have also consistently supported the notion of an elected mayor, and in our poll this week over 70% of them indicated agreement once again.

In Manchester, our members have been equally consistent in their opposition – and who can blame them? In Sir Richard Leese and Sir Howard Bernstein they have enjoyed a ‘dream team’ leadership that has delivered success after success and made Manchester the premier provincial city in the UK. Their skills have not only included a unique ability to work positively with the private sector, but also to bring together all the local authorities in Greater Manchester to form a combined authority that has strategic powers over planning, transport and economic development policy- and with it the ability to attract significant sums of government cash, even in these days of austerity. The jointly owned Airport provides the foundation on which the AGMA partnership has flourished over the years, but nobody can deny that the negotiating talents, vision and leadership of the two Manchester knights has been THE key advantage that the city has enjoyed over other core cities.

The poll result from Manchester therefore, with 80% saying ‘No’ to the mayoral proposition is understandable. But will that change? For not only did Liverpool opt for the mayoral model last week, but so too did the residents of Salford – or at least the 10% who bothered to vote in a referendum on the issue that was held last Thursday did.

Sir Richard was right to tell DMIB members the day following this vote that he could see little difference being made to the direction of the Combined Authority simply because Salford was going to call its leader a mayor. The Salford job does not come with the package of powers and resources negotiated by Liverpool. But he will know that if a Maverick candidate is elected in May – and on a low poll anything can happen- then it may be a more problematic move than initially thought.

I think that scenario unlikely. Nonetheless, Sir Richard and Sir Howard cannot go on forever, and when they do decide to go off into the sunset, there may be more of an appetite to explore alternative governance arrangements.

And, where does all of this leave England’s newest city Preston, and the proud county of Lancashire. Well, as has so often been the case during the past decade, on the sidelines I’m afraid. The idea of an elected mayor for Preston was reasonably well supported in our poll, though fell short of a majority, and despite the government finally banging heads together last year and forcing the county’s local authorities to form a Local Enterprise Partnership, the type parochialism that has held back Liverpool is a killer in Lancashire.

A debate about Lancashire’s local government arrangements certainly needs to be had, but so too the involvement of the business community. Is Lancashire’s LEP private sector led, or is it simply an additional committee of Lancashire county Council with a few members of the private sector rubber stamping decisions for box ticking purposes? There was talk of ‘beefing up’ business input into the LEP. But so far, no action!

An elected mayor in Liverpool will be good for the city. ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix’ it is a sensible position for Manchester to adopt – certainly for now. But for Preston and Lancashire we are still searching for what the question needs to be, let alone the answer.

The latest reality television programme to hit the screen, and I use the word reality in the loosest sense, is Desperate Scousewives. This follows similar docu-soaps The Only Way is Essex (TOWIE) and Geordie Shore, which were born out of tripe dressed up as entertainment in the shape of Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity...

As always, a television programme focussing on a group of Liverpool people who are not exactly the brightest bulbs in the box has been met with the typical tirade of abuse from a minority of my fellow scousers who are convinced that anything that doesn’t show our city in the best possible light is part of the wider media conspiracy to do Liverpool in! In time I’m sure the Echo will run an ‘outraged’ feature in the paper , if it hasn’t already; there may be a special Roger Phillips phone-in on Radio Merseyside; and the producer of Desperate Scousewives Mal Young will be invited to a public debate at the Town Hall to ‘explain himself’.

But has Desperate Scousewives really damaged the image of Liverpool? Anyone who is watching this show and concluding that this is the real Liverpool is as daft as most of the cast appear to be. The damage to Liverpool’s reputation to those who matter, inward investors, serious business people and the international market, is nil.

Similarly, I doubt if Essex or Newcastle are overly concerned about the respective programmes that did not necessarily highlight the most positive aspects of their area. I await with interest the reaction to ‘Manic Mancs’ and ‘Lancashire Hotpots’ which are no doubt programmes in the making.

So, should we just ignore these TV shows and accept them as titillation for their audiences? That is certainly the view I took, until I had lunch with two female solicitors earlier this week.

They actually reminded me of a debate that had taken place at a Downtown event that focussed on women in business during Manchester Business Week. Bruntwood’s Kate Vokes, supported by many other business women, expressed the view that young girls, who these programmes are targeted at, are lacking in ambition, partly because of media influence. Young girls watch these shows, and aspire to be wannabe WAGS, models, or any sort of celebrity.

If that is true, then maybe we should be more concerned, and we ought to be holding programme makers to account in a far more serious fashion than is currently the case. Or better still, we should remind ourselves where the off button is on our television’s and take a bit more parental responsibility over what we expose our teenage children to on the box.

All the statistics surrounding his announcement earlier this week must have read like an edition of ‘Grim Times’ to George Osborne. Forecasts on growth, down. Public Sector job losses, up. Unemployment, up. Borrowing at the end of this parliament, up.

He decided, unsurprisingly, to stick to his guns as far as public expenditure is concerned. In order to protect UK Plc’s’ triple A’ rating, he argues that we must demonstrate that we are serious about tackling the deficit.

Many sympathise with this approach, but is Osborne doing enough to stimulate private sector growth as he significantly contracts the public sector?

The access to finance scheme for SME’s is welcome, though the details are somewhat sketchy. Support for planned infrastructure schemes, including several in the North West, are also positive, whilst we are promised a flurry of initiatives in the near future that will cut bureaucracy and red tape for business.

My frustration though is that for little or no cost, Osborne could and should have done more to kick start our flagging economy. Still no movement on the nonsensical  top rate of tax. No incentive to businesses who want to employ new staff with an NI holiday. A dismissal of the idea to reduce VAT to 5% in the building and construction sector. Absolutely nothing for exporters, who are among the biggest risk takers in the world of commerce.

For me, the Chancellor is being too cautious. Hammering the public sector only works if he supports the private sector to grow in order to mop up what we were told this week is a huge 700,000 people who will lose their jobs through government cuts.

Surely investment in stimulating the economy is better than money being spent on welfare benefit payments.

Almost inevitably the news that John Lewis had scrapped its plans to establish a flagship store in the now seemingly defunct Tithebarn project, only to announce they are setting up a satellite unit in Deepdale has met with a mixed response. Some have expressed relief that it is at least a sign of some investment into Preston, whilst others have highlighted the fact that such a move further discredits the city centre as an attractive location in which to invest.

Certainly, one can sympathise with Preston City Council wanting to welcome any type of investment and jobs as record unemployment figures were announced last week. However, it does make one wonder whether the abandonment of a fully staffed Preston Vision also signalled the end of a real vision for Preston?

If we are to develop a city that is worthy of the name, then a blueprint that is pragmatic yet ambitious, affordable and deliverable has to be articulated sooner rather than later. A fanfare welcome for another out of town retailer does not offer much hope or confidence to either existing downtown Preston retailers or potential developers.

If you currently own a shopping  mall or retail unit in city centre Preston, would you feel comfortable expending significant sums of cash on refurbishment, without a clear idea of what the plans for the future of the city were going forward? Equally, without a master plan to work to, what are we to tell inward investors when they ask what opportunities exist?

These are the questions that our political leaders need to answer as a matter of urgency. Whilst every other region in the UK has accepted that cities and city centres in particular are where it’s at when it comes to economic growth and development, we are sat on the hard won city status badge, not quite knowing what to do with it. That is frustrating, and if it continues beyond 2011, unacceptable too.