Growing up on a Manchester council estate, Amy Newton remembers doing jobs like collecting glasses at the pub and working in a pork scratchings factory.
"And I remember thinking 'God, there are so many girls I went to high school with who would eat this job alive'. But they're still on the estate. And they're still hoping that when he comes home from work on Friday, he gives them enough money for nappies at the weekend." "And so there's all sorts of skills that the working poor have. There's all sorts of transferable skills that the working poor have, very often you have to be very resilient, because you have trauma, and a boatload of s***e can go on.
"And the reason for that is because they're in survival mode. So what you tend to find is that they will work hard, they will graft, they will try and find a solution. They will try and make something work." "If you ever get the chance to go to booking.com's offices, bite their hand off, because it's like another world and it's right here in Manchester, and less than half an hour away, you have got kids counting coppers to get a chippy tea on a Wednesday night, because no one else is going to make the tea for them."
With innovative tech playing an ever-greater role in all our lives, Manchester is right at the heart of what's happening and can justifiably claim to be one of the UK's, if not Europe's, biggest tech cities.