Londonist went on a sojourn to Manchester recently, and loved the place. Home of iconic bands, incessant rain, pretty canals, and some of Britain's most interesting modern architecture outside London, Manchester has a lot to offer. If only there were a way to get there that didn't involve spending half your life savings on an overpriced, inflexible rail ticket. Never let it be said that Virgin Trains can't spot an opening in the market.......

Here's evidence that not all of the city's institutions of learning are as progressive or as forward thinking as the interactive bits in the science museum: The British Library is to extend a ban on pens to all its reading rooms to protect its precious collections. From January, the home of the Magna Carta and Lindisfarne Gospels will only allow pencils. Not very wiki is it? They were probably worried that a hoard of......