Life in a Northern Town

On September 8-10 I was in Manchester for a MANCEPT Workshop on the current state of libertarian political philosophy. Organiser Andreas Wolkenstein put an interesting group together; one of the participants was left-libertarian Billy Christmas, who will also be on the Molinari Society’s panel on privilege in December.

My own MANCEPT talk was essentially an historical introduction to left-libertarianism; I’ve posted the abstract previously, and I now post my powerpoint presentation as well.

In honour of Manchester’s industrial heritage (and also because it was cheap), I stayed at a former warehouse converted into a hotel. (It’s industrial! It’s radical!) I also enjoyed dining on the Curry Mile, a section of Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants; Mughli was especially good.

William Morris woodcut

Touristic informations – Mancunian edition:

To catch a bus, it is not sufficient to stand by the correct bus stop with an expression of expectation. The bus will whiz right by you. You need to flag it down like a taxi.

Also the price for the same ride will be different every day.

In London, vendors are familiar with American credit cards; but they’re a puzzle for vendors in Manchester. They look for the chip instead of the strip.

The Lebanese version of baklava has halvah in it.

After the conference I squeezed in a couple of days in London: caught a beer at the Harp with Sam Bowman and Ben Southwood; visited the William Morris Museum; visited the graves of Herbert Spencer and Douglas Adams at Highgate Cemetery; walked around on Hampstead Heath; and visited Forbidden Planet and the National Gallery.