Declan's week: Ticket to ride

In this week's city diary, a chance to roam

We're travelling around a bit more than usual to bring you the business news.

Our business reporters - Brian, Marcia, Max and Sarah - are frequently on the road, balancing the reports from the London Stock Exchange with stories from around the country.

But when we get the chance, we also move the whole operation out of the Stock Exchange. Getting out of London is a real breath of fresh air.

We were at the Motor Show in Birmingham just a few weeks ago, looking at the state of the global car industry, and the part it plays in the local Midlands economy.

Before the end of this month, we'll be in Manchester, for the annual meeting of the bosses organisation, the CBI.

Liverpool vs Manchester

I hope we'll be able to tell you a bit about business in the North West England while we're there.

There's always been fierce competition between the two big cities in the region - Liverpool with its history of sea-faring trade, and Manchester with its multitude of factories and mills.

One thing I'd like to hear more about is the impact of the two airports in the region - my business friends in Manchester say their airport has been one of the big reasons behind its rapid revival in the last few years.

My business friends in Liverpool are hoping the new John Lennon airport will take some of that business back for them.

Belfast stopover

This week just gone, I've been back home in Northern Ireland. This wasn't so I could have a long weekend with the family!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to visit them at all - my home town Strabane is in the north-west of the province, a good 90 miles from Belfast. I didn't get much further than our studio and my hotel during the day and a half there.

We were in Belfast to get a different view on some of the regular business stories, and to take part in the BBC's special day of business programmes in Northern Ireland.

If you were watching last Thursday, you'll know our big stories during the morning were about interest rates, and the European single currency, the Euro.

And these are stories where there really is a difference in opinion in different parts of the country.

When we talk about interest rates in the Stock Exchange studio, we always hear from London-based economists, who talk about the strength of the housing market in the south of England.

Their frequent call is for the Bank of England to keep rates high, and keep the squeeze on house price rises.

The business folk who talked to us when we were in Birmingham told a completely different story.

The Midlands are of course the workshop of Britain, and they've been through a rough time in the last few years.

Industry has been squeezed by falling demand, and the high value of the pound against the Euro. They don't understand all the talk about higher interest rates. They want an immediate cut in borrowing, to bring down their costs and ease the pressure on sterling.

The factory owners and economists we heard from in Belfast said the same thing. Northern Ireland's manufacturing industry shrank by almost one tenth last year.

The number of people employed by factories and workshops has fallen below 100,000.

So they were hoping the Bank would reduce borrowing costs again on Thursday - and were disappointed with the decision to leave rates on hold.

No doubt the Bank will be criticised for paying more importance to the southern English housing market than the state of industry in Northern Ireland, the Midlands, and the North west of England.

Bank of England

The Bank's governor Sir Eddie George took a lot of abuse about this from papers in the north east a few years ago, when the high tech factories were slimming down their operations. But a lot of that flak was misplaced. The Bank goes to a lot of time and effort to keep itself up to date with the health of business in the UK's different regions.

It has a network of regional agents, who visit local firms and talk to bosses about their experiences.

That information is fed back to the Bank's Threadneedle Street headquarters in London, and shown to the interest rate controllers when they have their regular meetings.

Some economic journalists in London say the Bank's regional agents have an almost clairvoyant knowledge about the health of the economy.

But that doesn't make its balancing act any easier. It has to set one interest rate for the whole of the UK, even though different parts of the economy are growing at different rates, and for different reasons. And that's an echo of the other big story we looked at in Belfast - the Euro.

The European Central Bank in Frankfurt

The European Central Bank in Frankfurt has to set one single interest rate for the continent of Europe, even though different countries are in different states of economic health.

Interest rates across the continent are even lower than they are here in the UK - which is fine for Germany, struggling to keep out of recession - but could be disastrous for the Irish Republic, where inflation is rocketing.

Business is itself split over the Euro

The fault-lines aren't obvious. It's not big company versus small company, or international versus local. Niall Fitzgerald, the boss of one of Britainżs biggest companies, Unilever, is strongly in favour of it - in part because Unilever sells food, detergents and toiletries around the world, and it can do without the costs of converting currencies.

Sir Stanley Kalms, who until recently was the boss of Dixon's, is strongly opposed to the single currency - even though Dixon's has stores across the continent.

The CBI has members who are in favour and members who are against the Euro.

The same is true of the local Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors.

In Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK to share a border with a country that uses the single currency, the opinion polls say bosses are in favour of it - though a recent BBC poll suggests only by a margin on 3-2.

Weżll hear a lot more about this as we get closer to any decision on whether or not to stage a referendum on the Euro. We'll make sure you'll get the views from all sides of business - and from all parts of the country.

Declan Curry is Breakfast's regular business presenter, bringing you live updates from the London Stock Exchange every weekday morning from 6am