It is insular, lacks diversity, parochial, lacking in culture, but it is still my place of birth.

Why do you love your place of birth?

Out of the two who automatically spring to mind, one lives at home and the other on campus in Preston.

The one who lives at home lives right next to Warrington baths, you can hock a pretty nice loogie over most of the new shopping centre without much effort. She's 18 and has her name on the tenancy agreement with her old dear.

Doesn't get much better than that in my eyes.

No more so than any other Northern town and infinitely less so than some.

Not true on the diversity one. Burnley, Blackburn, Oldham are all a heck of a lot more diverse. You'd be hard pressed to find a less diverse town than Warrington (for its size).

Depends how you look at it; Warrington is full of Eastern Europeans. Just because they look the same as the average Warringtonian doesn't mean they don't have a different culture.

And the Asian communities might add diversity in places like Oldham and Blackburn but the communities are very insular and segregated.

Do you know how many East Europeans there are in Warrington?

3,000 springs to mind, no idea why though

If that is true, that is about 1.5% of the population. Miniscule.

I may be thinking of a story about 3,000 Poles coming over. It may have been 3,000 had moved here up to the point of the story.

I may be wrong though, but I can't see the Eastern Europeans and Iraqi Kurds of the town coming up to anything more than about 5%

That would be an interesting statistic. When I used to be involved in renting properties we were pretty much solely dealing with Polish tenants and companies were shipping them over wholesale to populate the workforce in various warehouses.

It seems half the bus drivers are Polish as well.

I don't suppose specific stats would be taken as they have the right to work in the UK as EU citizens.

I'd be astounded if 5% of Warrington's population was non-British.

It will be more than that. I know of one company alone that brought over 300. However many only stay for six months or so before returning home as their employment contracts finish.

And if there was only 3000 I doubt anyone would have bothered opening a specialist Polish grocery store. You want to try shopping in Lidl as well; no-one seems to speak English in there.

And another point; I know that the number of kids in St Philips Primary School who are registered as of non-British origin (bear in mind this is a Church Of England funded school) was 15% as it stated that on the Ofsted report.

And whilst I am on this subject, why is the lack of diversity in Warrington seen as a negative point? I bet it would only cause tension.

I seem to remember you said you dealt with properties at the lower end of the market. Hardly surprising then that you saw a disproportionate number of Poles.

Because Warrington is insular.