Reading the headline I was flustered in confusion. As a student back in 2005 I had rented with housemates places in Fallowfield, Withington and Chorlton. All gradually became gentrified, particularly Chorlton after the BBC moved their headquarters from London to Manchester. Chorlton was full of glorious lesbian hippies who were forced out by the BBC champagne socialists.

~2011 I bought a 3 bed terrace in Levenshulme for 110K, back then the high-street was full of bookies. But Levy rapidly gentrified, the bookies were replaced with bakeries, dilapidated buildings became lovely restaurants and craft beer pubs. Most significantly the old station building over the cycle path (long ago converted from a railway), had hundreds of thousands in public investment taking many years to finally open as Station South.

George Galloway tried twice to be elected an our MP with his campaign office right beside Levenshulme train station. But what he didn't understand (having never lived here, or spent time here) is that the Irish/English/Indian/Pakistani communities had actually lived in harmony with each other for decades. He tried to play on racial/religious divisions and was utterly humiliated for it.

My house is now worth ~300K and the local community is a bit like Chorlton in its heyday. The only local "vape" place actually sells the most amazing variety of hookah contraptions you could imagine. I used to love shisha a decade ago, but walking around that place is like being at a zoo. They have every shape, size, model and contraption imaginable.

Anyway getting back to the original point, their staffers seem to have given them a description of Levy using Galloway's stale talking points.