TOP CITIES OF THE WORLD : IPSOS MORI POLL

I went to a very enlightening presentation last night. MORI had commissioned the largest ever global study on the best city in which to live, work and do business involving 18,000 people. They said they were going to give me all the information at the end, but they didn’t so I barely took any notes.

Ben Page, Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI presented the findings explaining that the report was introduced like all good reports – starting with a drunken chat about whether anyone had bothered to ask the public what they thought about the cities of the world. They listed 48 major cities. The Rt Hon Hugh Roberston MP who is Minister of State for Sport and Tourism, Department for Culture, Media And Sport said a few words before rushing back to a vote in the House of Commons. Talked mostly about how wonderful London was in it’s extraordinary ability to reinvent itself – London has it’s constants of course and deep tradition – the Royal Family et al and then with the events of last summer it was reintroduced to a global audience. He believes the food, accommodation and friendliness is all infinitely better than it was ten years ago and therefore many communities from around the world feel at home in London.

The findings were very interesting but I don’t have the details. New York was voted the overall best city, not only in which to live, but also to do business, with Zurich (really?) voted best city to live in and Paris best city to visit.

Europe’s favourite city – was LONDON (YAY) and then there were several very intelligent, highbrow presentations from the British Council and the London School of Economics which I failed to write down.

I wasn’t late home, but came back all enthused about intelligent conversation and reading newspapers (the event was held at the Foreign Press Association and was full of journalists from around the world) only to find this piece of “world breaking news” from my daughter…see next blog.