This week Rob Parsons chats to Amy Newton, the founder of the Manchester Tech Festival which brings together leading figures from the North's tech and digital sectors. We all know technology and digital is going to be a bigger and bigger focus for our political leaders in the coming years, but are we doing enough to make sure people from the North's council estates can get the kind of jobs that are cropping up in the shiny sky-scrapers of Manchester city centre? Find out why Amy says the working poor and specifically the children of alcoholics have the skills that could make them a valuable asset to any tech company. Plus: How do you play cat bingo and why will visitors to the Manchester Tech festival get a chance to have a go at it. And Rob has a proper look at a subject that's found itself not before time at the forefront of the political agenda in the last few days: the question of how we solve the housing crisis and specifically why aren't we building enough homes? He's joined by Arlen Pettitt is a Policy and Comms Consultant who writes the North East 'Wor Room' policy newsletter, and Tom Jones, a Tory councillor in North Yorkshire and author of the Potemkin Village Idiot Substack. Among the questions they try and answer is why does Rishi Sunak's patch of Richmondshire have one of the lowest house-building rates in the country, and is there a crisis in the North East where prices are lower than any other region? *** The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin. You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices