You hear a lot of opinion about race and immigration issues, but you don’t see that many facts.

The Office for National Statistics published some dense and complex figures today reflecting the ethnic make-up of Britain as of mid-2007.

I’ve managed to boil them down into pie charts for each borough of Greater Manchester.

(Note to any young readers planning a career in the ‘glamorous’ world of journalism: this is my day off. This is what I do on my day off. On a Friday. Later, I might wash the car.)

The result? With the exception of the city of Manchester, our region remains overwhelmingly ‘white British’. Which you wouldn’t necessarily guess from the tone of the debate.