Keep looking upwards in Manchester

Manchester, United Kingdom

“You have to look up in Manchester,” said my colleague, a look of acceptance on his face, “all the best bits are above ground. Way up, in fact.”

I nodded, as I had just walked the two-mile route between Mancunian front door and office, a stroll that should have been good. The sky was blue, the air crisp, the traffic not too bad and I had started out after breakfast with a spring to my step. The only near miss had been an out-of-control cyclist, headphones in place, gum-chewing with vigour, who had decided a one-way cycle path could be ridden in either direction.  I am sure he never saw me when I leapt sideways from his track and sought sanctuary in a nearby doorway. Armageddon could have come and gone and the cyclist would not have noticed.

Manchester is the UK’s third largest city with London leading the way and Birmingham in between. The city is also seriously attractive, or at least that is how I see its buildings. Its centre is big and grand; wide streets, polished buses, up-to-the-moment cars, and plenty of workaholic folk who are smartly dressed in expensive clothing. I counted nine chalk stripes on a single pedestrian walkway. I lost count of the upmarket handbags.

But despite the city having the second highest density of millionaires in the country, second only to London, the place still makes me uneasy. I am unsure why. Perhaps it is the sense in my shoulders, by day and certainly by night, that someone is following, even watching, or maybe I have a guilty conscience. I am uncertain what. Yet wherever I look in modern Manchester, however posh the building, I have a feeling the city is not a happy place.

Maybe it is Spice, that new arrival which has created so much chaos. Forget the name, so innocent, for something that is a life destroyer. Spice is a synthetic cannabis, hugely addictive, which turns folk into so-called living zombies. In one weekend, not so long ago, Manchester’s police made almost 60 city centre arrests; each was Spice-related. The area known as Piccadilly is the most troublesome. The Spice epidemic, for that is what it is, has not been helped by the city council being the fourth most deprived in England, an unemployment rate of nearly 12%, while more than 15% of the population relies on benefits. The number of rough sleepers has quadrupled since 2010 and barely a week ago 11 illegal immigrants were found sleeping in cardboard boxes in a local warehouse.

Manchester may be a city of business, art and culture, the home to the BBC, but it also houses a pile of not-so-hidden problems. No wonder I felt uneasy walking to work. Predictions are that Spice will spread up and down the land, no doubt in record time, if it has not already done so. The metropolis meanwhile has drafted in extra police to deal with this manmade evil.

Whoever called it Spice was clearly very clever. After all, spices are what you put on food and make grub feel good and tasty. Meanwhile another name for this so-called legal high is K2, after the 8611-metre Himalayan peak that many know but few have climbed. But its other names, and there are more than 600 in total, are more descriptive of the dangers; Mojo, Scooby Snax, Black Mamba, and Annihilation.

The idea for Spice came from natural marijuana and an attempt to repeat its performance synthetically. Researchers also supported its development as they were being prevented from investigating natural cannabis, so something artificial was a better option. The situation soon lost control and Spice, K2, Black Mamba, Annihilation, was the result. This beast is 100 times stronger than natural marijuana, very addictive and one-third the price. How can an addict say no?

The drug is often sold as a potpourri, pretends to be an innocent product, but will usually carry the warning, “Not for human consumption”. Slowly the world is declaring it illegal, including the UK in 2016, but there are some lands where it is still permitted. Slovakia and Spain are examples. We do not perform well in Brexit Britain. At one point, nearly 12% of the population purchased a legal high in a 12-month period. That puts the UK ahead of the US, of which we cannot be proud, while pasta-loving Italy scores lowest at 1.3%. To avoid the UK ban, many legal high dealers have set up websites abroad. Spice, wicked though it may be, is hidden from us all and in plain sight.

Despite my unease, my worries about Spice, and regardless of my near-miss with the cyclist, I had let my gaze drift downwards during my morning walk to work. Quite simply, it was one of those days when I wanted to look everywhere. I just felt that way. There was the Beetham Tower, Midland Hotel, Manchester Town Hall and Shambles Square, each of which was a model of Mancunian construction. Yet it was as my eyes looked beneath the horizontal that the city changed. I did not have to look far. There were stickers on lampposts, graffiti on letterboxes, discarded bottles, and homeless unfortunates wrapped in cheap synthetic sleeping bags, begging chalkboard in hand, dotted around the streets. There was no better way to learn that my country, our country, is not a happy nation.

As I walked, as I felt my pace involuntarily quicken, men on street corners gathered in groups and gave me a visual once-over as I passed them. This was not a time to hold a mobile to my ear.

“Please don’t ring me now,” I silently begged my colleagues. There was no way I would answer. Headphones, or staying mute, was the safest option. I did not wish to become a statistic.

You see the figures show there are more than 30,000 crimes each month in Greater Manchester, over 500 are thefts from the person. Antisocial behaviour, the most likely story behind the many empty bottles lying abandoned on street corners, in doorways, on canal towpaths and under pedestrian bridges, is responsible for 7500 violations. And that is a good month. A year ago, this monthly number hit almost 12,000. When the BBC first moved to the city from London, its staff were offered security escorts to take them to their cars.

Hazardous place is Manchester, whatever the chalk stripe and upmarket handbag situation. While it settles, if it settles, I will remember to keep looking upwards.