The Northern Agenda

Is Manchester now the London of the North?

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Episode notes

Listeners may not have heard of the village of Daresbury, near Warrington in Cheshire, which has a population of just a few hundred people, though it does have a major claim to fame though as the birthplace of the author Lewis Carroll.

But just a few hundred metres away from the village is a facility that is already putting the name Daresbury on the map, at least in science and business circles, as the home of Sci-Tech Daresbury, a pioneering science and innovation campus which boasts dozens of 150 high-tech companies.

And the work being done at Daresbury is not so much like one of Carroll's fantasy novels but more the stuff of science fiction. Just a few weeks ago the ribbon was cut on advanced quantum computer research and development site, run by PsiQuantum in what is the Silicon Valley start-ups first such facility outside the US.

This week on The Northern Agenda podcast, Rob Parsons speaks to two senior officials at the site - Dr Katherine Royse, director of the Hartree Centre and Dr Peter Waggett, UK director of research at IBM Research Europe - to find out why a science campus in the Liverpool City Region is now a hotbed of one of the world's key new technologies.

Also, Rob chats over the last week and the most memorable moments of 2023 with Jo Timan and Ethan Davies from the Manchester Evening News.

We ponder the question, is Manchester the new London? And is Andy Burnham on a collision course with the Government over his clean air plans?

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The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.

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