The Marple Leaf

Norbert Smith - one of the greats - a Cricklewood legend too?

2012-02-03T19:51:00.000Z

I'm looking forward to seeing Peter Capaldi in a new documentary about Cricklewood Studios - on Sunday. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14310252 - if it's half as good as the above tribute to British film making excellence we will be in for a treat.

A Week In December by Sebastian Faulks

2012-02-03T08:50:00.003Z

While learned critics were reaching for the "Dickensian" epithet, I recalled The Wire, which had multiple story lines, interweaving characters and each said something funny, pointed and wise about the times we are living in. The word then and now is "sprawling" both of the clever interlocking themes and the wide ranging cast - some you believe more than others - John Veals the hedge fund scumbag most of all. Mixed in with all of that is a smattering of sexual tension and human tragedy. What is particularly impressive is that those issues pan mental illness, football, immigration, hedge funds, the book world, the law, morality in the media, Islam, ambition, failure, voices in the head and a few more layers of London. There have already been a number of books dealing with the elements of the financial crisis of 2008, but in the hands of Sebastian Faulks, a really accomplished literary writer, this one will stand out. There is an element of him showing off, using contemporary themes he backs them all up with flawless research and detail. It makes for a dizzying read - but one that is hard to dip in and out of.

Blackburn Rovers fans - listen to this

2012-02-01T23:25:00.001Z

We recorded a podcast last night with Daniel Grabko the author of the draft plan for a mutualisation of Blackburn Rovers. The link is here. Everything about Daniel's plan is open, honest and optimistic. He wants input and feedback - let me know what you think.

The Rocky Place

2012-01-31T22:28:00.001Z

Did you have a special place you visited as a kid? We did. In fact, we had a few. My parents were no fools; not for us were the arcades of Blackpool or Morecambe, and their temptations to take your money for slots that were stacked against you and piles of ice cream, no way. We would spend Sundays at local beauty spots in the "area of outstanding natural beauty" beyond Quernmore and towards the wilder moors.
For my Dad's birthday weekend we took a stroll down Nostalgia Way with a clamber up this outcrop on Littledale Road between the Scout camp and Quernmore. The view and the light were magnificent on Sunday, something magical and special, it rekindled memories of childhood and adventure and quite how loved we were as kids. I still can't find a name for it though, so we still just call it The Rocky Place.

Marple shops in 2012

2012-01-29T22:11:00.001Z

There is very little to disagree with in the major findings of the Mary Portas review of High Streets. And the points in her recommendations about public consultation and compulsory purchase powers over empty shops are of particular interest. Much of the underlying problems, however, are caused not by estates management, but an economic imbalance between the numbers of retail units and the amount of money in the economy that people want to spend in shops.

My eldest son and I had a lovely coffee and teacake in Portobello recently, the newish cafe on Market Street. I admire the courage of the owners, especially with plenty of local competition - particularly with Costa opening on Stockport Road.

Thoughts quickly turned to how the ideas Mary Portas has expressed may play out in our community, in particular in Marple centre. On one hand there are empty shops and new businesses trying to make a go of it with wafer thin margins. On the other hand there are ever more plans to bring in new supermarkets to increase the space to shop in and a proliferation of national brands.

The discussion on the Marple website about the recent opening of Costa and the plans for Chadwick Street, as well as Hibbert Lane, have been categorised by rumour and bickering - just as it does in cafe's homes and pubs, I expect - but the misinformation is damaging and counter productive.

So, good luck to Portobello, good luck too to everyone prepared to give it a go. It is for their sake that we must continue to oppose Asda, but we also have to be grown up enough to ask - what else would work around here? What are we lacking? This is a truly important time, we must not waste it.

David Miliband makes the case for Mayors

2012-01-26T22:41:00.001Z

pic courtesy of Coral Grainger + instagram

David Miliband was in Manchester last night for a Labour Party event where he was interviewed by DJ and writer Dave Haslam. Much as I felt like a fish out of water in such company, and grimaced that I'd fed their coffers by a few quid, I actually really enjoyed it.

There's a decent review here on Manchester Confidential, so I won't attempt to repeat that. But a few additional thoughts occurred. The first is over the issue of public engagement in politics and the second is linked to that - the issue of city Mayors.

What I like about David Miliband the thinker, the backbench MP and the activist, is he has a very analytical view of the way the world is changing. The reason I joined another 150 people on a wet Wednesday night at the Mechanics Institute was because I was very impressed with his contribution to a debate on the world a decade after 9/11 I heard in London last year - there's a link to a bit of it here and I have been particularly impressed with some of his non-partisan thinking on issues like youth unemployment.

Also, to be fair, his Movement for Change sounds very grand - get community groups who are involved in political (with a small p) campaigns and issues and work alongside them. By engaging with them the Labour Party can renew itself by listening as well as learning. At least I think that's how he defined it.

I liked his analysis of politics and how to find political solutions in stages -"empathy, analysis, vision, policy and implementation." To illustrate by example he cited the problem of youth employment, and was both logical and creative.

In answer to a question on Mayors for Britain's cities he held his hands up in deference to Manchester Labour people and said he was in favour. The political establishment in Manchester is opposed. At an event I chaired last week Sir Richard Leese mapped out his reasons for opposing - Manchester has evolved a political structure where the 10 local authorities have combined some key functions. They come under the control not of Manchester City Council, but the Combined Authority, made up of all of the boroughs. That is led by the elected leaders and organisations to administer these joint functions. Manchester is not being offered the opportunity to elect a Boris or a Ken.

Yet I've heard David Cameron make the same case for a Mayor being the accountable and elected office that you can knock on the door of. Great cities need one. The difficuty about what is on offer so far is way removed from that. Salford is voting on the issue today - I'm hearing a turnout of less than 15 per cent will reject the idea - but this is no way to deal with the issue. The cities of Manchester and Salford, let alone the towns of Stockport, Bolton, Wigan, Oldham, Rochdale and Bury aren't big and powerful enough to require a big and powerful charismatic leader - let alone made-up entities like Tameside and Trafford. I actually like the idea of the elected Mayor at the head of Greater Manchester, driving policy and having some vision to deliver it. The city region has been blessed by the stable double act of Sir Richard Leese and his chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein, but you cannot enshrine in the constitution of a city region for "remarkable civic leader who gets things done by hook or by crook". I don't look forward to the day when these very able men choose to do something else in their advancing years. They are virtually irreplaceable. But it is their success that has made the Mayoral issue a non-starter.

But who outside of Greater Manchester and outside of policy making knows of these two? When was Richard on Question Time last? When was he on Newsnight? If he had the office of Mayor for a city region of 2.5 million people he'd have power and clout to be on all the time. He has the right to be as high profile as the tedious Alex Salmond. And the point David Miliband was making was that these examples of good practice in the cities have the potential to reshape the narrative of national politics.

POSTSCRIPT - there was a low turnout in the Salford referendum, but there was also a yes vote. Seems like the politically active voted for another body that has no popular enthusiasm.

Make Venky's History

2012-01-23T23:12:00.003Z

The Venky's have been a blight on Blackburn Rovers. Their ownership has been disastrous. There are good people working against all the odds to prevent a total meltdown, some of them as employees of the club, most of them as supporters trying to broker a solution.

When you analyse why they bought a Premier League football club - you have to deduce it was for the promotional possibilities. That seems to have amounted to getting the players to take part in a humiliating chicken commercial, promotional trips to India (where the club captain came over all Iraqi Minister of Information) and a few hoardings around Ewood Park. Even they have failed.

All the protests against Steve Kean have achieved have been to get the football establishment rallying round him and our fans portrayed as oafs. The element of the protests against Venky's have either been ignored, dismissed as ungrateful or just plain racist. So far.

The thing with people who crave good PR is that they can't deal with bad PR. A few corporate fans at Wigan told Venkatesh and Balaji the facts of life and that was the last we saw of his pony tail and bling.

Jerome Anderson is distancing himself from them. They have no allies in England at all. And now their business judgement is being questioned in their home country by this terrific summary of their comedy ownership in the Economic Times of India.

Slowly the message is starting to get through.

Momentum is slowly building too for Rovers fans here to grasp the nettle and see them off. Of course, they have to want to sell, but the first thing is making them not want to own any longer.

Beyond that the options are emerging. Wayne Wild, a forthright and willing businessman and sponsor of the Darwen End, has articulated his view, here. Ian Battersby has spoken to the Independent, here, about what the Venky's need to do as a matter of some urgency. And then there's a detailed business plan here, prepared by a Swedish based Rovers fan to establish a mutual trust. All of them amount to the same thing I've been saying here for a while - leave this club. Give it back. Go away. You have wasted money, don't waste any more.

These are all positive steps forward to ridding our football clubs of these owners. Make Venky's history.

What are the chances?

2012-01-23T16:34:00.000Z

The strangest things happened last week.

Firstly, on Friday, on the Marple flyer, I squeezed into my seat and popped open my latest book - A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks, a book published in 2010. The guy across from me was not only reading the same book, but the same edition and was only marginally further into the 392 pages than me. "What are the chances of that?" I asked him, holding the book up. He was about my age and was dressed in a similar way too.

Logic, rather than magic, deduced that the chances of two similar men reading a Faulks book are still longish, but not impossible. Novels can take time to catch on. Faulks is everywhere at the moment, with the TV adaptation of Birdsong appearing on Sunday night. My book was passed on by a mate at work, he thought I'd really like it, and I do. Maybe the other bloke had the same encouragement, its themes are current and modern. It's not quite like the One Day phenomena, where word-of-mouth saw interest explode, but it's not a surprise.

Secondly, the CD I have on in the car at the moment is This is the Life by Amy MacDonald. Again, it's an older product - 2007 - and has been a success for a while. My artistic son's art teacher Sean Wood had the same CD on in his studio on Saturday. Again, what are the chances? Again, it's not a surprise. He is a man of good folky musical heritage. I like that kind of music and have been dabbling of late. Sean would tend to play music that the kids would like to draw to, but that he likes too, but would be the easier end of that spectrum. She is therefore ideal. Subconsciously too, I suspect I was subliminally drawn to her music when scanning Sean's collection.

I am occasionally inspired and awestruck by serendipitous moments, but these weren't them. Just a load of middle class white people all liking the same kind of stuff.

Labour's drift towards irrelevance

2012-01-16T22:34:00.002Z

Labour have had very little to say about enterprise and business since Peter Mandelson's industrial intervention in the death throes of the Brown administration. It was surprising therefore to digest a report recently called Labour's business - why enterprise must be at the heart of Labour's politics in the 21st century put together by Alex Smith and Luke Bozier.

All political parties need to do this. Enterprise is at the centre of modern life, too often a private sector policy centres on the degree to which a party sucks up to the city, or holds big summits with hand picked business leaders. Usually it's all an exercise in semantics and grandstanding that Gordon Brown excelled at. Yet help for start-ups, simplifying taxation, access to finance and addressing abuse of monopoly position in supply chains are critical for small businesses.

This report has some good analysis in it and some useful ideas.

Luke Bozier today resigned from the Labour party and is joining the Conservatives. His statement is here.

Steven O'Riordan - still missing

2012-01-15T22:08:00.002Z

Steven O'Riordan is still missing from the Whaley Bridge / Stockport area. His family and police are very concerned for his welfare. He was last seen in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, and he regularly walked along the canal to Marple and also worked at Lyme Park.

It must be desperately worrying for his family, but they should never give up hope.

Anyone with information should call 0800 555 111.

It was wrong to target Steve Kean and still is

2012-01-15T19:19:00.001Z

A year ago Blackburn Rovers stuffed Liverpool in a thrilling game. The crowd cheered the new manager Steve Kean and even chanted his name. That night I sat in the director's area at Ewood close to Jerome Anderson and the Rovers board. I asked chairman John Williams how he was and how things were going. He wasn't happy. I blogged about it here. He was gone within the month.

Thanks to the excellent research of Nick Harris on the Sporting Intelligence site we now see the detail of quite how the whole unravelling was taking place at Ewood Park. In an extraordinary and explosive letter to the owners the concerns of the three executives running the business - John Williams, Tom Finn and Martin Goodman - laid bare their frustrations. They were being frozen out of big decisions and feared the worst. This is what they said about the manager: ‘Steve is an inexperienced manager who needs day-to-day support and assistance from people experienced in the running of the football operations.’

Last week we were treated to a quite dreadful interview on Sky Sports News with Jerome Anderson of sports agency SEM. He used phrases like "certain issues" "things happened" about the Venky's and what was going on at the club without ever being challenged as to what they were or what the problem was to which he was the solution.

Anderson also makes a statement here defending himself and attempting to correct the widely held belief that he is involved in running the club.

"At the conclusion of the January 2011 transfer window I ceased to assist Blackburn Rovers Football Club in any capacity and I can confirm that I have not had any role or influence in their transfer policy or any other business of the club whatsoever since that date."

The letter from the three executives reads to me like the first step in a move towards the exit door. An expression of frustration, yes, but also a legal step in a potential case of constructive dismissal. It also paints a picture of owners who are utterly without a clue, but are relying on advice from SEM, but not their own board. It also refers to a meeting at the Liverpool game with Barclays Bank. Now, if John Williams was telling me, a journalist, that he wasn't happy with his personal situation then it must have been equally difficult for him to confidently convey a good message to the bank. And as we now know, that relationship is crucial.

A year on, there has been nothing at all to reassure the bank that this is a sound business. The accounts made for grim reading and the Barclays are after assurances if they are going to support the business as a going concern.

I have strongly believed from the outset that these owners are the real problem, Steve Kean is a symptom of that ineptitude. His inexperience was clear from the outset, but everything else I have heard this week backs up the depth of the problems here. You even detect in Anderson some fast paddling to get as far away from these owners as possible.

It has never been established how the deal to buy Rovers was funded. The ultimate holding company is in India, where borrowing costs are high, so I suspect they borrowed internationally. My contacts on the deal were surprised when Venky's showed evidence of funds, as they suspected, as I do, that Venky's are nowhere near as wealthy as everyone has been led to believe. It was one of the many questions Sky Sports didn't ask Jerome Anderson.

So, to the present and the next few important games. For what's it worth, I think the whole BRFC Action campaign needs a rethink. All that passion and commitment needs a new direction.

The personal abuse of Steve Kean is wrong on a human level. But it has also been wrong on a tactical level too. I've heard the conspiracy theories about him as well, and I'm sure they fuel the hatred. In this kind of atmosphere untruths will fill the void of silence from the absentee landlords. Some of his public statements in support of the owners have been ill-judged, but the Kean Out protests have allowed the campaign to be portrayed as one man against the mob. With better support from a board and a proper infrastructure, who knows what he could achieve? But it's hard to construct a slogan out of that.

Any campaign for action has to have a conclusion in mind. The heat needs to increase on the owners to sell to someone who can do something with the club and who cares, but this lot have proved they are buffoons who are not fit to own a football club.

And in the middle of all of this I still have one other question - what's Bob Coar for?

A ramble round Manchester

2012-01-15T17:55:00.000Z

There's a ramble round Manchester on the The Casual Connoisseur Blog: by my pal Bill Routledge. Some good tips on ale and clobber.

Bill has a good nose for decent pub and has written a few of these city guides on the CasCo site.

The photographs are pretty good as well - the one opposite is of Bill and LS Lowry in the bar of Sam's Chophouse.

Viva la Madness - a bonkers book about gangsters

2012-01-12T21:07:00.000Z

This book is absolutely bonkers. While the title of Connolly's debt novel Layer Cake took some explaining, right up until the main character's final denouement, this name is clear from the outset. The story is set in summer 2001 and takes up the tale of two of the main men from Layer Cake, the anonymous narrator and Morty, his link to the criminal underworld. They inhabit a world of drug dealing and crime, but this is also mixed up with international high finance, computer hackery and even the military industrial complex. Illiterate but street smart villains plotting up with duplicitious toffs. It gets stranger and stranger, which is good. The plot twists are good, and the portrayals of the lengths crims will go to are staggering.

He's also very good on dialogue - can you believe the words being said? Well, given that we'd seen Daniel Craig in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo recently, and that he played the same character in the prequel to this tale, you can't fail if you place his dry delivery and brooding insolence as you go, indeed, he is so clearly at the forefront of Connolly's mind again too. There are other unstated reasons why all the ugly gangsters dislike him - he's a stunner, right? There's lots of detail about London's layers, from Mayfair to East Acton, but on the whole it's just a mental story. Highly recommended.

The Boys are Back in Town - QSG book reviewed

2012-01-11T22:46:00.001Z

The Quality Street Gang is part myth, part untold story of street legends. Who was in the QSG and who owe their respectable fortune to such early adventures is still the subject of rumour and conjecture.

This books is a welcome addition to the narrative of Manchester's colourful social history. That shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of what they got up to, or even that Jimmy Donnelly comes across as a nice guy, because he doesn't really. But it has some good insights, even if a lot has been left out.

The style of the narrative has a good pace to it, the stories are well told. That doesn't come as a surprise given it's been written and edited by Peter Walsh, author of the authority on Manchester gangs, Gang Wars.

I always maintain an understanding of the criminal margins of society give a valuable insight into how social order is kept.

In all the time I've been the editor of Insider I've always kept an eye on the "alternative business networks". It's surprising how often they touch the mainstream - the clearest account in this book is the tale of Kevin Taylor, the man who was accused of corrupting former deputy chief constable John Stalker. All nonsense, as it turned out. But Donnelly then tells another tale. His next door neighbour in Manchester was chief constable Michael Todd, who asked for help from Donnelly when his case was robbed. Bizarre.

The extract from Insider is here.

The Milo books site is here.

David Cameron strikes a chord in Manchester

2012-01-10T22:56:00.001Z

David Cameron was in Manchester last week. I met him at the Vermilion restaurant at a reception organised by Iqbal Ahmed, successful businessman, the restaurant owner and a Conservative Party supporter. I was invited as a chum of Iqbal and his friend Sajjad Karim one of the Conservative MEPs for the North West, and not in any kind of press capacity. For that reason I'm not supposed to mention the event, or even to quote the PM.

What I will say though is that Cameron was very impressive. I always think he is at his best when he freestyles and speaks from the heart. As he's proved this week with his challenge to the SNP over the Union, he knows which battles to fight and the ground on which to fight them. He spoke for ten minutes without notes, something I don't see him doing enough.

There were only about 50 of us at the reception and I was in the racial minority of white people present. The PM spoke to those there with a real sense of Conservative history and tradition and as a real One Nation Conservative. The values he stands up for are, he says, enterprise, family values, country. Not surprisingly it struck a real chord.

Rovers fans statement - almost in agreement

2012-01-05T22:27:00.001Z

A group of Blackburn Rovers fans have put together a well considered statement, which shows them to be far wiser and more articulate than the media give them credit.

Anyway, it's here. All the stuff about negligent owners breaking promises and threatening the club is good. So is the stuff about being realistic - bigger clubs have been relegated, etc.

Where I disagree is the conclusion, which ultimately comes down to more hounding of Steve Kean and calling for his replacement. Wrong question. He's NOT the problem, he's a mere symptom. Venky's are the problem.

Book reviews - two faces of Northern Ireland

2012-01-03T22:46:00.001Z

Two books, one presenting an utterly hopeless view of a city gripped by collective madness and hatred and the other offering a glimpse of a better future. The double door and room metaphor providing this reader with too complex a metaphor.

Journalist Kevin Myers is not a sympathetic chronicler; neither does he seek your approval for his motives. Nevertheless, his selfish and needy character flaws lays bare an honest "as I saw it" account of 1970s Belfast with few concessions to the usual prejudices. He can also be quite funny at times.

It makes the achievements of Jonathan Powell all the greater. As Tony Blair's right hand man he spent an enormous amount of time trying to solve the seemingly insoluble problem of the smallest part of the United Kingdom. This detailed diary of the protracted peace talks leaves you with massive amounts of respect for Blair and for a number of key players in Northern Irish politics. All the while there is the sense that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuiness, David Trimble and Ian Paisley wanted peace but had to bring the wilder warriors amongst their people with them. To do so needed patience from the British government side and a number of brave acts of faith in the goodwill of all sides.

Both books are a valuable contribution to understand divisions in society - but also for how they can be overcome.

Truce at Rovers - to no avail

2012-01-02T23:10:00.001Z

The kids persuaded me to take them to see the all conquering Rovers today. And for our return to Ewood, we were at least relieved that the win at Old Trafford seemed to have taken the sting out of the fans protests against manager Steve Kean and the owners Venky's. So the fans weren't the reason Rovers lost.

The performance never lacked effort, but it always seems the way against Stoke. They attack everything, they pressure the physical threat - meaning, they fouled Samba at every set piece. But that wasn't the reason Rovers lost either.

For me, it came down to the service to the strikers - Yakubu looked a handful and it speaks volumes that Huth wellied it whenever Yak came close to him. But he didn't get any kind of service from a very functional and frustrated midfield. Wheras Stoke had the threat of Etherington, our flat midfield 5 just passed it to each other and back again. Pedersen wasted his throws and his corners, and a late free kick, but got the biggest cheer of the day for a slide tackle on Steve Kean. I wasn't impressed with Petrovic at all and Formica was ineffective.

Would it made much of a difference if someone had played off the Yak from the start? Who can tell? But it's this defeat, like the losses to West Brom and Bolton that will count for a whole lot more in May than a shock win at Old Trafford.

We took the flag, it was examined at the gate, and was allowed in as the words aren't offensive to the manager or the owners. I am genuinely thinking of getting the top line changed - any suggestions gratefully received.

2011 in review

2011-12-30T21:45:00.000Z

Here is my review of 2011 based on the most frequently used labels. It reads like it was quite a poor one to be honest, but it doesn't reflect what I feel. MediaCity has opened, I've become a school governor and joined a board of my old University. I've been to Northern Ireland for the first time, I took Rachel to Rome, and visited the Isle of Man and London a few times. There have been big changes in my working life, big developments with the kids, achievements and firsts as well as challenges, but on the whole our life is a happy one.

Blackburn Rovers - the downward spiral feels like it is running out of control. In every way 2011 has been one of the worst years in the history of the club.

Marple - the biggest issue locally has been the prospect of Asda putting in a planning application for the college site on Hibbert Lane and the council urging Waitrose to develop in the centre. More local shops have closed, more chains are creeping in. Marple is fighting the tide stronger than other places, but it is a hard road.

Book review in a lift - Finally got round to reading Any Human Heart by William Boyd, which was my favourite novel of the year, but my favourite factual book was probably Harold Evans' memoir.

Food - If you ask the kids they rave about Red Hot Buffet. We liked the Grill on New York Street. Still disappointed by Manchester's so-called fine dining establishments.

Politics - Cameron is at his best when he is bold - he has done well enough over Libya and on Europe, and he has seen his Chancellor win the argument over the need to cut the public sector. Many in the party are now urging an election in 2012. It would be a gamble, but he'd probably get a majority. I think he's still got more to do to change the party and needs the Clegg to do more for him.

Commuting - It's been generally OK, but when it's bad, it's very, very bad. But Rose Hill is a nicer station while Marple is to get more improvements.Telly - This was the year we discovered Inbetweeners. Old favourite Spooks finished, which was probably necessary. Enjoyed Shadow Line on DVD boxed set.

Blogging - Kept it up, discovered that linking to Twitter is the biggest driver of traffic. Blog posts about Rovers are still the most popular stories, with an astonishing hit rate for the post about the Steve Kean hatred and tears for Gary Speed.

Music - I did a fair few concerts this year with a wide range - the Halle, the BBC Phil, Take That, I Am Kloot, The Specials, Elbow and Sinead O'Connor. Edited playlists avidly to a top 100.

Friends - this has been a tough year. Losing Tim Edwards and Uncle Pete have clouded everything. If they are to mean anything, it has really made me appreciate those I love dearly. Life is precious.

Film: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-30T20:54:00.001Z

We were lucky enough to get another rare night out this week and so headed for the Cornerhouse in Manchester to see this film.

We must be the only people who haven't read the Stieg Larsson books, but can safely say the film was a rollicking good thriller. An interesting range of characters - notably Lisbeth - but also a compelling cast, working faithfully to the exciting plot. Very stylish too.

Today I was the "I like trains" kid

2011-12-30T19:37:00.002Z

In that strange period between Christmas and New Year one is often tempted to do strange and new things. Today I joined less than a dozen other men and one woman in travelling on our local ghost train, the 09:22 from Stockport to Stalybridge. This is a weekly service, yes weekly, and is the only train that stops at the otherwise defunct and deserted stations at Reddish South and Denton.

I was ready to categorise my fellow travellers as trainspotters or rail enthusiasts, (you know the cliche's - not a wedding ring amongst them) - but detected just a few curious blokes looking to check out something they'd heard about on Radio 4 recently, or had read this lively piece by Michael Williams in The Independent.

The train edges out of Stockport heading north, turning right (very slowly) at Heaton Norris junction and snaking through towards Reddish and then Denton on a single track. I'll be thinking of this underused line the next time I sit in traffic on the A57 as people from Denton drive to Manchester as a commuter service to the city hasn't proved to be within the wit of any rail planners. Both stations are just grey platforms served by this train. Presumably the cost of decommissioning them is greater financially and politically than keeping them notionally open. Andrew Gwynne MP mentions it here.

Top blogger Stuart Vallantine alerted me to the service when he blogged here about the service when it used to run on Saturday, which may have made some kind of sense. Now it just runs on a Friday and arrives in Stalybridge before the legendary buffet bar has even opened, but in time to get back on a crowded train to Manchester Victoria within minutes. There being nothing to keep me in Stalybridge at this time of day I opted for this and then hiked back across Manchester to Piccadilly.

This is one of the so-called Parliamentary trains - a route that is kept open for unclear motives, either political or for more Kafkaesque bureaucratic reasons. Maybe there lies the possibility of doing more with the line and these stations in the future, but for now the train operating company keeps this rather pointless service going.

My kids just laughed when they found out what I'd done and kept singing this mildly irritating song called "I like trains" at me. Apparently it's some kind of YouTube sensation.

Tintin movie - a reminder of how good Herge was

2011-12-29T21:31:00.002Z

I was disappointed by the Tintin movie. The overblown CGI, the fights with cranes, the chase down the mountainside were all modern additions and a concession to young audiences who crave such action. That is as maybe, but the Tintin stories have been so enduring for their realism and low tech drama. Yet all that was good about the film was all that Herge created - realism, subtle touches, kind characters and stories with multiple layers. If the next film is to be Tintin's moon adventure (realism, yes, I know), then hopefully there will be enough of the personal drama to sustain a modern sci-fi kids film. But I doubt it.

Where did we go on that big black night?

2011-12-20T23:26:00.001Z

We don't get out much. But park that thought for a moment. For one reason and another I've found a song trapped in my head like an ear worm for the last two weeks, it's not particularly new either. It's I Am Kloot's Northern Skies, from their Mercury Music Prize shortlisted album The Sky At Night - here's the video too, which is pretty good as well.

I was delighted then to discover that vocalist John Bramwell was performing on Sunday at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. We went along and massively enjoyed a posh concert experience. He was sort of supporting a folk singer called Thea Gilmour who is touring with her band. Now, she was brilliant too. But I found myself drawn to the tragi-drama and warmth of John Bramwell. From the moment he walked on with glasses of wine and beer in one hand, guitar in the other, he struck a chord as a fundamentally honest performer. His guitar playing was incredible too - filling the strange space of the in-the-round theatre with a wide range of often complex notes and chords.

He didn't even play Northern Skies, but that didn't matter. His voice, a lush, throaty Mancunian mix - part Richard Hawley and even Glen Campbell, brings to life these amazing songs, these authentic tales of a life lived. More than once he said the song was about "drinking, and disaster". I Am Kloot have never made it big, they probably won't, but I'm pleased they've got recognition, support and a loyal following. But you find yourself in that awkward position of wanting them to accelerate alongside Elbow's slipstream and carry on with these songs that have been produced painfully and carefully amidst a backdrop of fighting demons. You don't do that kind of work from a mansion in Oxfordshire. You may do a different kind of good work, but it's not this. The new album is out in 2012, sometime.

Link: I Am Kloot.

We want our Rovers back

2011-12-20T22:51:00.004Z

I can't bear to go to Ewood Park any more. So I apologise for pontificating from the comfort of my home 35 miles away as passionate fans protest outside the ground. I simply don't want my children subjected to a hostile and poisonous atmosphere. My love for football has seriously waned anyway, but what Venky's are doing to Blackburn Rovers is nothing short of disgraceful. I always feared that new foreign owners could clumsily make poorly thought through decisions, but these clowns haven't got a single decision right. Not one. Even if they sacrifice their appointed manager tonight or tomorrow, it won't matter. I have always said he wasn't the whole problem. They are.

We had something special for a while. We could have even have kept something special too. In this scenario we may even have seen the club getting relegated eventually, but as I sit here brooding over tonight's loss to Bolton I feel acute pain because it's worse than just being bottom at Christmas. Something else has gone.

Why didn't we, as a group of fans, have the balls to say to the Walkers and to Rothschild, we'll take it off your hands and run it as a mutual trust? There's enough good people with skills and connections to have made it work at some level for the long term. All we have now is decline.

But it would at least have been our Rovers and not the plaything of mysterious foreign owners being manipulated by shady agents.Why, oh why, has this happened?

This is what Venky's should do now. They should turn round to the protesting fans, and to John Williams, and to Tom Finn, to Ian Battersby, Ian Currie, Wayne Wild and Roger Devlin and say, "Sorry, we just didn't understand English football. We cocked up. Have your club back. We're sorry."

Christopher Hitchens, an appreciation

2011-12-17T11:30:00.002Z

This is a bit of a rehash of a book review I did of Hitch 22, the memoir of Christopher Hitchens, who has died.

Christopher Hitchens was a profound and prolific writer for whom I had a consistent and enormous regard. His features in Vanity Fair were always the best thing in that impressive magazine. He intentionally and deliberately got up people's noses, so, when you agreed with him, such as over his storming book on the Clintons, No-one Left to Lie To, you cheered at his searing wit, his savage pen and his withering turn of phrase. When you disagree, as I do over his outright dismissal of anyone of faith anywhere, I just thought he came across as oafish. Even more bizarrely, though I find less to agree with his brother Peter Hitchens about, I find his civility more endearing.

Hitch's stance on Iraq was the one issue he became the most notorious for. I supported the case for regime change in 2003, even though the WMD issue was the one used here in the UK, and Hitchens provided ballast for an argument that became almost unarguable through the so-called "insurgency" and throughout the horror that Iraq became. Yet, he did this well, he's a closer observer and a longer chronicler of Iraq than most and predicted a horrific collapse of Iraqi society, post-Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons, with or without an invasion. Where Hitchens was at his best was in his journalism, such as when he told the story of Mark Jennings Daily, a young American who enlisted in the army and died in Iraq after being convinced of the nobility of service by Hitchens' writings. This was heavy grown-up stuff. Proper choking accounts of a proud family deep in grief, but accepting into their home the man who so inspired their son to fight and die.

There are some wonderful tributes today. This from Norman Geras, and this from Ian McEwan. But the best of all is this from his brother Peter.

Sunday addition: Christopher Buckley in the New Yorker.

On the theme of death, which has concerned me lately, I liked this line from Peter: "Much of civilisation rests on the proper response to death, simple unalloyed kindness, the desire to show sympathy for irrecoverable loss, the understanding that a unique and irreplaceable something has been lost to us. If we ceased to care, we wouldn’t be properly human."

I hope Christopher is being pleasantly surprised right now.

Celebrating Christmas

2011-12-11T21:33:00.001Z

Those slightly hysterical stories that scream - "political correctness gone mad" - usually make me think the writer is actually enjoying stirring up a bit of indignation. Offence is taken even when it is not intended. The reader's prejudices are then fulfilled, and everyone feels validated that the world has truly gone mad. More often than not there is a wilful misunderstanding at the heart.

I had to stop and look at this press release I got recently for that very reason. To put it in context, it's from an employment consultancy and they want to "warn" or "safeguard" or maybe "scare" employers about what to do at this time of year.

Here is the first of four questions in full.

"Can we still refer to 'Christmas' or should we use a generic term such as 'festive season'?"

That's a fair question and probably representative of the kind of paranoid paralysed management thinking that the HR industry thrives on.

Here is the answer they gave.

“This question is still up for debate but employers should avoid fostering a working environment in which employees feel that the term ‘Christmas’ is forced on them. In the same way that Christmas may continue to be celebrated by Christians, other religious celebrations throughout the year should also be able to retain their identity. For example, Muslim employees should not be discouraged from celebrating Ramadan, or Jewish employees from celebrating Hanukkah. As long as various religions and beliefs are considered and accounted for, employers do not need to refrain from using the term 'Christmas'.”

I think that is absolutely disgraceful advice. The question is not "up for debate" at all. It is Christmas.

Please advise me as I think I may have missed a subtle hidden meaning here. This national celebration, throughout the world, has deep significance. As for forcing it upon anyone, then it is simply not up for debate whether this country, a Christian country, a tolerant Christian country, celebrates a public holiday called Christmas Day. There isn't even a reason to justify celebrating the gift that God gave us at this time of year. Or even creeping secularisation. No, the question appears to be even more crass than that. Who can deny the existence of Christmas? And really, who is actually offended by the celebration of Christmas? No-one. The last thing people of other faiths want to do is quash the main festival at the centre of the Christian faith.

As I tried to think through the rising anger, I slowly came to the conclusion that it was me that was missing the point. There's no debate. There really isn't, but the company pimping such nonsense want to have one. If me and other gullible media are dumb enough to react then here they are, proclaiming honest broker status, in order to arbitrate at the centre of a row they themselves are at the centre of. This is just PR spin for an industry peddling fear. And for that reason I'm not going to dignify the sender or the client with a name check.

Quick video about social media

2011-12-10T22:16:00.001Z

Social media, some rules

2011-12-10T21:14:00.001Z

It's surprising to think that there are rules to social media, given how fast moving and new it all is. But I think the etiquette of it is a personal thing. Here are a few of my rules, let me know if I've called it wrong.

Twitter
I only block real nutters on Twitter, the spirit of it to me is it should be open and free.
I know you're not meant to take stats seriously, but I'm very pleased to have broken the 2000 followers barrier.
I don't follow everyone back, and 800 or so is rather unmanageable.
I try and thank, or talk back with, anyone who mentions or responds.
If I'm not following someone who makes the effort to converse, then I follow back.
When I ReTweet something I source the person who did it first.
I don't do mass #ff follow Friday things. I tend to state a reason and single someone out.
I use Twitter to link to my blog.
My Twitter is more about the me beyond work, it's not about my job and what the business is doing.
I also use it a source of research as well as reading all the nonsense.
I don't abuse people. Except during Question Time. If I have, I've regretted it.
I try not to be too intensely personal about family life, but I do enjoy doing the Saturday morning plan - hat tip @adventurebaby.
Be honest, be loyal, be kind.

LinkedIn
This is much more businesslike and is about very much about work stuff.
I don't accept requests from anyone who says they are a "friend" but aren't. That's cheating.
I tend not to accept requests from anyone who I've never heard of, but if they've taken the time to introduce themselves beyond the standard LinkedIn message, then I do.
I don't like the standard LinkedIn request, I prefer it when people personalise.
I don't feed my Twitter through LinkedIn. It's not always appropriate.
I comment in groups, but not enough. Who reads them?
Be honest, be loyal, be kind.

Google +
I haven't made my mind up about this, but the same rules as LinkedIn should apply, I think.

Blogger
This blog is about everything I'm interested in beyond work, so I don't blog about anything work related. That can be tricky as I'm a journalist and I write about business at a time when business and finance is the biggest story of the modern era.
I use all these other tools to promote this site. Hence the Twitter name.
I'm not hooked on stats, if I was I'd blog about the news and football all the time.
The most read story on this blog was about the abuse of Steve Kean and the thin veneer of humanity that followed Gary Speed's death.
Be honest, be loyal, be kind.

Facebook
I think Facebook is the devil. I really don't like it.
I have edited it right down to close friends, friends abroad and family.
I think it's hidden from general view.
I pretty much use it as a photo sharing service and hold back from the sharing of nonsense.
I don't join groups or sign petitions.
The kids are all obsessed with getting on Facebook, but none of them are old enough to. So they can't.

A big list of my 100 favourite songs

2011-12-08T22:01:00.001Z

When I get the Rose Hill rattler home on a wet night in winter, the last thing I want for company is a random selection of new music to try and get into. No, I want the familiar comfort blanket of what I know I like. In a very male and very anoraky way I have compiled a list of my 100 top songs. To make the editing easier - and there is also a top 1000, a top 500, a top 250 and a top 150 - I've restricted each artist to one track each and bent the rules with the New Order and Moby thing. But there's more to this list than just 100 songs I like; each one has a particular memory. At least three throw up cherished emotions about friends who've died, many others evoke memories of special times and places. I'm slightly embarrassed that the list is overwhelmingly white and very male biased, but I think the span and range is pretty varied. Given all of these, if you have any suggestions for new stuff that you think I might like, let me know - maybe have a go yourself.

The Winner Takes It All, ABBA
Blaze Of Glory, The Alarm
Somewhere In My Heart, Aztec Camera
Ticket To Ride, The Beatles
One Last Love Song, The Beautiful South
The Day Before You Came, Blancmange
Union City Blue, Blondie
Tinseltown In The Rain, The Blue Nile
Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen
Nobody Does It Better, Carly Simon
Close To You, The Carpenters
Father and Son, Cat Stevens
The British Way of Life, The Chords
(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, The Clash
Let's Go Out Tonight, Craig Armstrong
Bloody Revolutions, Crass
Weather With You, Crowded House
Life On Mars? David Bowie
Dignity, Deacon Blue
California Über Alles, Dead Kennedys
Little Ole Wine Drinker Me, Dean Martin
I Touch Myself, Divinyls
MacArthur Park, Donna Summer
One Day Like This, Elbow
Getting Away With It, Electronic
Stan (Featuring Dido), Eminem & Dido
Paid in Full, Eric B. & Rakim
Love See No Colour, The Farm
Do You Realize?? The Flaming Lips
The Message, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Gil Scott-Heron
It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry, Glasvegas
November Rain, Guns N' Roses
Silver Machine, Hawkwind
When You're Young, The Jam
Tomorrow, James
Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley
Annie's Song, John Denver
Ring Of Fire, Johnny Cash
Atmosphere, Joy Division
It's Grim Up North, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu (KLF)
Sunny Afternoon, The Kinks
Stairway To Heaven, Led Zeppelin
The Life Of Riley, The Lightning Seeds
Aria [with Michael Gambon - Layer Cake speech] Lisa Gerrard
All Woman, Lisa Stansfield
Idiot Child, Madness
Motorcycle Emptiness, Manic Street Preachers
What's Going On, Marvin Gaye
Anchorage, Michelle Shocked
Extreme Ways, Moby
Irish Blood, English Heart, Morrissey
Express Yourself, N.W.A.
True Faith , New Order
New Dawn Fades, New Order Feat. Moby,
Time Of No Reply, Nick Drake
Don't Speak, No Doubt
Don't Look Back in Anger, Oasis
If You Leave, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Being Boring, Pet Shop Boys
She Said, Plan B
Cruel, Prefab Sprout
Purple Rain, Prince & The Revolution
Pretty In Pink, The Psychedelic Furs
Common People, Pulp
Losing My Religion, R.E.M.
Fake Plastic Trees, Radiohead
Orange, Richard Lumsden
Please Read The Letter, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Gimme Shelter, Rolling Stones
More Than This, Roxy Music
In Dreams, Roy Orbison
The Spirit Of Radio, Rush
Run, Baby, Run, Sheryl Crow
Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinéad O'Connor
Itchycoo Park, The Small Faces
How Soon Is Now, The Smiths
I Got You Babe, Sonny and Cher
Ghost Town, The Specials
Up The Junction, Squeeze
Suspect Device, Stiff Little Fingers
I Am The Resurrection, The Stone Roses
Alright, Supergrass
Give A Little Bit, Supertramp
It's My Life, Talk Talk
Reward, The Teardrop Explodes
Heartland, The The
The Boys Are Back In Town, Thin Lizzy
Song to the Siren, This Mortal Coil
I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone,Tom Jones With James Dean Bradfield
Funky Cold Medina, Tone-Loc
Wide Open Road, The Triffids
Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve
Story of the Blues, Wah
And A Bang On The Ear, The Waterboys
Baba O'Riley, The Who

Mike Garry - poet, teacher, hero

2011-12-07T23:22:00.001Z

I've linked before to Mike Garry's emotional and powerful writing. Well, this account of his encounter with an apparently suicidal man on a bridge is spellbinding. What a hero.

Manchester's finest?

2011-12-07T22:50:00.001Z

Last week I was with a bunch of friends and we had a guest with us from out of town. She's a big hitter with a big global brand. Obviously we wanted to go to a good restaurant with a lively atmosphere that shows off our home city of Manchester in a good light.

Once again I found myself wincing at the toe-curling provincialism of what passes for restaurant culture in our aspirant city. There was a crooner belting out songs as we arrived - he was OK, but I'm not sure it's necessary. We then waited at the bar for ages. When we got our booked table for 8, it was a round table and a square table pushed together. The service was either in-your-face intrusive, or utterly negligent. I had a tray of drinks spilled down my back - but, hey, accidents happen. The food was of variable quality, some was excellent, while one of our gang just barely touched her salty mush. Mine was alright. Overall though, the portions were just far too big, which sort of summed the place up - flash and brash for the sake of it. The worst thing was the way the waiters brought the food to the table and just shouted the name of the dish and tried to dump it in front of whoever they managed to make eye contact with. They had no idea who ordered what. Basic waiting skills require you know this. It's just good manners. To just pile it all on the table is what I expect at the Star of India in Nelson at 11pm on a Friday, but not somewhere that purports to offer a fine dining experience. In fact, I only have good memories of that curry house, but you take my point and they didn't take a fraction of the bill here.

And the restaurant? Go on, have a guess.

On Jeremy Clarkson

2011-12-04T21:16:00.001Z

Frankly there have been quite ludicrous flights of indignation over Jeremy Clarkson's comments on the One Show that public sector strikers should be shot.

Most people had made their minds up already, probably before they'd heard what he had to say. It struck me as an opportunity for anyone who doesn't like him to say - "ha, there you go". Equally, some responses in his defence brought up comedians who wished death on Margaret Thatcher. Yebbut, he said, she said, yebbut, yebbutt.

If you took every utterance of a celebrity pundit, journalist or comedian as seriously as those of a serious figure in public life then you'd never stop.

I found myself agreeing with a comedian called Dave Gorman. He posted a blog entitled "Jeremy Clarkson should be lined up and shot". Many commenters didn't get past the headline, but you should, especially for the Bill Hicks references and clips.

Here's the essence: "Because if you really think that you and I are entitled to live in a world without offence, then you have to concede that everyone else is equally entitled to the same. And that means that all the jokes you like but they don't will have to go too."

Canal Street Gothic

2011-11-29T21:31:00.001Z

My dear friend David Thame, one of the finest business writers in the western world, is touting a sweet little book, created in the handful of wakingmoments he has spare from writing about industrial units inStaffordshire. It's raising funds for Albert Kennedy Trust, who do verysensible things for young gay homeless people in the big cities.It's called Canal Street Gothic, after the celebrated Manchester partystreet.

It's been very sweetly reviewed - funny, touching, "verynorthern" etc - I haven't bought it yet, but will. David says he hopes it gives pleasure as well as helping with themoney.You can find it on Amazon here. It's also in most sensible bookshops, and all the other onlineretailers. Selling quite nicely so far.

Fenton, Fenton, Martha!

2011-11-28T22:53:00.001Z

The kids have roared with laughter at the viral video of a poor bloke chasing his dog across Richmond Park as it attempts to herd deer. The reason they like it is it reminds them of me in the Lake District this summer chasing our pooch down the road as she was in hot pursuit of sheep in and out of cars and with me shouting. I wasn't laughing at the time, but nor did I take the Lord's name in vain. Amen.

Picture, left, drawn on the day by Matt.

My mates #16 - Ian and Andrea Wolfendale

2011-11-27T20:01:00.001Z

I've long maintained that the secret of happiness is spending time with the people you love. Well, this week has been a pretty bloody brilliant week because I've just been bowled over by the love of good friends at every turn.

I'll come on to all of that over the next few weeks and months, but today I wanted to pay tribute to two of my dearest friends Ian Wolfendale and Andrea Jenkins, who have just got married. This is a series where I randomly select someone I know and do a quick blog about how I know them, how we met and what I like about them. It's difficult to know where to start with these two.

Wolfie and Andrea and I work together. Andrea is in Insider's events team and Wolfie works in business development. They both have a calm, measured and patient manner about them. They are both very good with people and really excellent at seeing things from everyone else's perspective.

All over the country I meet people in banks, law firms and corporate finance companies who deal with Wolfie. I have to say I've never seen a client base with such respect and affection for someone who seeks to take money from them. But Wolfie listens and understands what they need. We have been to Belfast together a few times this year and you see the efforts there of a man who has introduced people to each other which could quite literally transform lives.

Similarly, I rarely see event organisers get thanked from the stage. I'm as guilty of taking them for granted as anyone, but Andrea has achieved that many times when she's worked in partnerships with people who can be difficult to please.

They also live locally - Mellor - and we get the train together sometimes, sharing our gripes about the shoddy service from Northern Rail / Northern Fail. We have also all been involved in the Marple Food Festival's Samuel Oldknow Pie Competition where Andrea gets to take notes while me and Ian eat pies. Bliss.

On a personal level, I will never forget how Wolfie was there for me when I was at my lowest ever ebb. It seems an age away now, but he took me in, put his arm around me and in his no nonsense way just helped me focus and get on with my life. In particular, he made me dispense with self pity and sentiment.

They got married in New York, but had the reception in New Mills. I can think of no better metaphor for the pair of them than that. The party was brilliant - a delightful and eclectic gathering of interesting and kind people - a fact that makes me think of no better tribute to them both. There were lovely speeches from best man Howard Thorp and from the father of the bride, Russ Jenkins. But the star for me was Wolfie when he announced they were very like Charles and Diana. Oh yes. There are three people in their marriage, he announced. And then revealed that ever present presence in their life - the entertainment: Elvis! Out popped the King himself! Rock and Roll.

To Andrea and Ian - may your love always be tender.

What if it had been Steve Kean instead of Gary Speed?

2011-11-27T17:15:00.001Z

The most uncomfortable aspect of the current protests at Blackburn Rovers is the deepy personal nature of the attacks on Steve Kean. I was talking to David Conn about this recently. We both commented on the affect this must all be having on the mental state of a man who is the object of so much targetted hatred. We concluded that he will probably have some kind of breakdown eventually. Either when he is finally sacked, or if he just combusts and quits. Yesterday at Stoke he had to be escorted to the tunnel by two burly minders, as the swelling of anger in the away end was so ferocious.

On social media sites and on the messageboards you see the ludicrous and overblown exposition of hysteria boiling over into all kind of violent talk. I'm sure it's just that - talk - but it has highlighted a massive loss of perspective. At the heart of all of this is a man trying to manage a football team. He might be out of his depth, he may also be getting rather well paid for it, but it is just a game of football. I see this everywhere at the moment and it depresses me. I see it when a 12 year old boy writhes on the floor and opposing parents and coaches trade insults over the fairness of the challenge. It's just a game, guys, get a grip.

Anyone connected with football today is trying to make sense of the apparent suicide of Gary Speed. The eulogies to him have been forthright and coloured with a massive sense of shock. I share them. He always seemed to be a man who had it all. Thoughts from everywhere are with his wife and family. "It puts life into perspective," is one comment that keeps coming back, yet it will soon be forgotten.

What would people be saying today if it was Steve Kean who had been found dead? Seriously, before you burn an effigy, wave a banner with his face on it, or scream that you wish something unpleasant upon him, just think that there's a human being at the centre of all of this. And it is just a game.

Commercial chaos - the Venky's and Rovers

2011-11-23T18:59:00.001Z

When Crown Paints ended their sponsorship of Blackburn Rovers, the efforts that went into finding a new shirt sponsor were laughable. The club ended up donating the sponsorship to a charity - a very good charity as it happens - but it was yet another example of a lack of direction under Venky's.

Commercially, Rovers start from a low base. With cheap seat prices, income from the box office is low and sponsorship options look even more limited. As this excellent piece on The Swiss Ramble points out the trick Rovers have to play, year in year out, is through player trading. Selling players on at a profit. That needs infrastructure and football people who know what they're doing. Sadly, Tom Finn and John Williams have gone. Venky's are now advised by an agent who thinks it's a good idea to go on TalkSport and brag about a deal where the selling club, Barcelona, were fleeced when Rovers signed Ruben Rochina. Nice one Jerome.

So, given that the club only has one main sponsor these days - what efforts do you think the owners have made to keep that company, WEC, onside?

I'll tell you. Nothing.

Here's Wayne Wild, one of the directors, speaking out in the Lancashire Telegraph this week.

"Blackburn Rovers Football Club is the heart and soul of the town. It has been for ever and certainly since they were in the Premier League. It creates employment for the town, the indirect business of people travelling to the games, and the sponsorship. I just feel if I can’t get a reply - as the only paying corporate sponsor - that underlines the frustrations that general supporters are having, because there is no direct contact. We do not feel valued. As well as the business side I have offered to mediate between the fans and the owners. I feel there is a growing gap between the two. Maybe if they could talk to me, I could relay that message to the fans."

I've met Wayne a few times and I really rate him. I'd go so far as to say he's just the type of forward thinking but feet on the ground business person they ought to have on the board. Obviously the Rao family have their own people as directors and they've made overtures to another couple of good lads - Ian Currie and Ian Battersby, even flying them over to India. But ask yourself, seriously, would you want to be a bridge to these people? I know I wouldn't.

Elbow at the Little Noise Sessions

2011-11-23T12:58:00.001Z

Saw a rousing performance from Elbow last night at the Little Noise Sessions for Mencap. They were playing at St John in Hackney, just around the corner from the hospital where my eldest son was born.

You don't need me to blather on any more about how good Elbow are, so I'll mention the venue - it was awesome. It required a more basic and industrial sound from the band to start with, but they grew into the surroundings and filled the space with their subtle sounds.

As an experience, it was truly immense. A very different performance from the last one I saw in 2009, but I just adore the simplicity of their songs and the warm stagecraft that Guy Garvey deploys. Hey, they may have been using backing tracks on a few numbers, including on THAT one. But they remain my favourites.

There's a good review here.

Getting down with the kids

2011-11-23T12:28:00.001Z

Every now and again we all get asked to do something out of the ordinary. Sometimes you just think - "nah" and make your excuses. Yet a few months ago I was asked by a friend if I'd help one of her friends and speak to some kids at a school in Partington, to the west of Manchester.

Time passed and we had a couple of chats, but eventually we settled on a time and I had a clearer idea about what the kids would get out of me coming to their classroom for a couple of hours.

I have to say it was one of the most exciting and rewarding days I've had. They were a tremendous group of enthusiastic children. We started talking about the news media, but by the end I was asking them how they share ideas and news and how they connect with people. There were social networks and sharing services they referred to that I'd never heard of. Their confidence with technology was boundless.

But it was also fascinating to get them thinking about employment and the jobs market. I've blogged before (here) on the importance of small businesses, sole traders and the self employed. I told the kids the story of how working with my Dad from the age of 13 taught me so many of the skills that have been important throughout my working life - namely; talking to customers, going out of your way to help people and smiling often. None of it costs anything and it's good for business.

I tried to get the kids to think a bit about their world and their aspirations - nothing grand, but to think about how they can apply all their love of technology and their particular passions into what they want to do. I've suggested they hook up with Young Enterprise and get a tour round the awesome new Salford University facility at MediaCity.

Anyway, to end the session we had a bit of a singalong. I'll try and upload the video soon, but above, left is a picture of me and the kids of Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School throwing those curtains wide. One day like this a year will see me right.

The glory of grief

2011-11-20T20:58:00.001Z

There is nothing glorious about death, of course. But I've been thinking this week about the power of intense and sustained personal grief. This year has been tough in that regard - I lost my dear friend Tim Edwards. Even thinking about him now I'm welling up.

In March we also lost my Dad's "little brother" Pete, who at 6 foot 7 was a giant in one very obvious way, but also a large and loving presence in the lives of everyone he touched. Pete was only 52 and left a wife Sue and two wonderful kids Danny and Jenn who are the greatest permanent memorial to a proper bloke who extolled such a love of life and a terrific sense of humour. There was a big gap at my sister's wedding party recently where Pete should have been. I thought today how much a throwaway joke about Liverpool player Andy Carroll would have been right up Pete's street.

This powerful feeling, this strong emotional wrench we experience is the ultimate tribute to a life lived. The packed services for both men were a mark of how loved they were and how many people had such varied and cherished memories. There's a bible reference that comes to mind - "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted". But there's also the celebration and love of a person who has died, but who created so much good, so much love and so much emotion.

I have difficulty explaining exactly what I feel here, but I was once again moved this week reading the eulogy Alastair Campbell paid to his friend Philip Gould by way of a letter to a man who was weakening and fading. His was a slow and expected death, while Tim and Pete both died suddenly - which shocked everyone concerned to their core. It also denied so many the chance to show how loved they were, but you hope, in fact you know, they surely were aware of it. Grief, as Alastair's piece says, is the price we pay for love. A quote from the Queen.

There's a link to it in full here, and I would encourage you to read it, whatever you think of AC. But I would like to take the last bit for Pete and his family and for how I feel about Tim: "More, I’ll miss your always being on hand to help me think something through, large or small. But what I will miss more than anything is the life force, the big voice. You have made our lives so much better. You are part of our lives and you will be forever. Because in my life, Philip, you were a bigger force than the death which is about to take you."

Gary Aspden in conversation

2011-11-16T23:04:00.001Z

The thick end of two hours, he spoke for. Just him, a chair, a table, some slides. And I was gripped. OK, 1980s street fashion, a Lancashire upbringing, raves and trainers may not be your thing, but they are all as part of me as my DNA. And Gary Aspden's too. For the Creative Lancashire Lecture, he told his life story - he didn't gloss over the lows, and he beamed at his high spots - Mount Fuji with Shaun Ryder, at the World Cup Final with Noel Gallagher, creating the costume for David Beckham for the 2002 Commonweath Games - but the best thing was, he kept connecting it all back to Darwen, Lancashire, where he grew up.

It was a masterful exercise in story telling and I could have listened to him all night, so too, I suspect were the sell out audience at the Continental in Preston, a cracking venue.

I also had a chat to Gary beforehand and he's happy for me to use his words and stories. It will form part of a book I'm currently working on. Watch this space.

Hat tip: Creative Lancashire, the D&AD and The Continental.

BBC - My Autism and Me

2011-11-15T21:40:00.000Z

This amazing and inspiring film was shown on BBC Newsround last week. The You Tube link seems to have vanished, but the link to the BBC site is here. There is so much misunderstanding about autism and how to live with the condition. I've read a fair amount about it, but these real people really explain it better. I'd appreciate any other links.

The application of Original Modern

2011-11-14T22:17:00.001Z

I had the pleasure of interviewing the archly fashionable Nick Johnson from Urban Splash last week. He's also the chairman of Marketing Manchester, the tourist board in old money. He told a good tale of how he took the themes of his university dissertation - urban living - and explaind how that then inspired him to work with Jim Ramsbottom on Castlefield, and then with Tom Bloxham at Urban Splash.

In the aftermath of the IRA bomb in 1996 the city's marketing response was deemed pretty crap - "we're up and going" - to which the reaction was "you cannot be serious". Out of that reaction came a stroppy group that met at Johnson's bar - Atlas - and said "enough". They called themselves the McEnroe Group and have since gone on to form part of the ruling class in the city: Colin Sinclair, Bloxham, Johnson, Andy Spinoza, Eliot Rashman, the late Tony Wilson was around them too. Their adoption of the ideas of urban geographer Richard Florida - who's work, The Rise of the Creative Class - inspired the decision to hire Peter Saville as the City's first creative director.

So, we covered all of that. Nick also revealed that Saville was cheaper than the others but was hired because he was prepared to challenge established wisdom. And he still does, to be fair. It was Saville's initial articulation of the "brand values" of "original modern" that Johnson described as an "economic development strategy".

Anyway, Nigel Sarbutts, who was in the audience for the interview, says he wasn't happy that the city adequately applies or articulates the aspiration. Well, maybe he didn't say exactly that. What he did say is here. "Ultimately Original Modern is an idea in search of substance. It is a hollow slogan and the truth of its weakness is that it was overshadowed overnight in August by a thousand flyers in shop windows, reproducing a logo copied from New York circa 1975."

I feel slightly glum reading that. Not because he's wrong, but because that last bit about the August response, as I said here, is so true. It doesn't detract however from how a big idea like original modern has been reduced to what it was never intended to be. There has always been a danger that Manchester gets carried away - but for me, there is much of modernity and originality abounding. It's time to proclaim it.

There are also plenty of forums where new ideas and new explorations of what the city has and what more can be discovered about Manchester are taking place. There is a thirst for knowledge and ideas beyond our narrow immediate concerns. I picked this up at the recent Science Festival, at the Cockford Rutherford Lecture and through some of the awesome offerings at Manchester's own Literature Festival and this weekend at the Salford University "Believe" day. And then there are the things I haven't had time to see - like Dave Haslam's interviews and conversations.

Someone like Nick Johnson can't have all the answers all the time. He's got a day job as well as a brief to keep the tourist board lively, motivated and on top of the city's assets to tell great stories. But it was a stimulating experience and hopefully useful for those that gave up their lunch hour to attend.

A long shot - latest plot turn at Blackburn Rovers

2011-11-13T18:30:00.001Z

If you hit a golf ball just a few millimetres away from the sweet spot, by the time the ball lands it will be several metres, if not a hundred metres away from the intended target. That is the most generous way I could describe the way the Venky's organisation have tried and failed in their ownership of Blackburn Rovers. Whatever is the good intention of any of their actions from the comfort of Pune, by the time that command takes effect back in Blackburn, it is horribly way off.

Throughout all the Anti-Steve Kean protests I haven't wavered in my view - he is not a good manager, he isn't the right manager and I don't like him. But he is a symptom of the problem, the owners and their advisers (SEM, Kean's agents) are the problem. They have a strategy for using a Premier League club to promote their brand in India - they have impressive plans to open stores in India and really crank up the promotion of Rovers in and around Pune. The plans for a training complex out in their home town also sound like great sense. What they don't have is a strategy in Blackburn. There may have been good reasons for getting rid of Sam Allardyce - the football was grim, they wanted to aim beyond that negative cynicism. That reluctance by the backroom management team to fire the bullets may in turn have led to the owners feeling they weren't supported - so they slowly dismantled a whole tier of management, probably on the advice of Jerome Anderson.

In every possible way you look at it, their ownership has been a disaster.

But though I viscerally dislike the way so many of these foreign owners have behaved in English football, I suspect Venky's are honest and naive, rather than bent. They don't form part of the international jetset who are plundering a national treasury. Much as football has never been a particularly clean industry, the foreign owners who have raped West Ham and Portsmouth, and their pals who hawk others around the bars of Bangkok, leave a vile taste in my mouth.

But even of the successful foreign owners ask of each one - what is in it for them? The Glazers will make a hefty return on the ownership of Manchester United. Roman Abramovich got a public profile and a home in a western country with property rights and the rule of law. The Abu Dhabi people have such wealth that they can expect to bring their country to international prominence through a successful Manchester City. It makes my blood boil when I hear callers to 606 begging for an oligarch to buy their club in order to compete in this league. I have admiration for Arsenal in staying sustainable through this period and hoping UEFA's financial fair play rules will validate their approach by the time Manchester City are only able to spend what they earn.

So what of Venky's and Rovers? Let's be clear - they bought a Premier League club at a knockdown price, compared to the value of Liverpool and Aston Villa which also changed hands recently. But even the sellers for the Walkers were surprised when they showed they had the money. I still don't know if they have paid the full £25m the Walker Trust eventually settled for, or whether they have borrowed to do so. It has given their brand an airing in the west and a new prominence in India. But there is such doubt over their ability to stabilise the finances that Barclays Bank now have a charge over pretty much everything.

The protests by the fans, thus far, have mildly shaken the owners. But they are not stirred into acting. They are also pleased that Steve Kean has been the lightning conductor for that anger. They hope that things will turn around. Afterall, there is an argument that suggests the squad is younger, fitter and arguably better placed to face the future than it was. What the Venky's really fear however is a backlash that could taint their brand back home. They bought the club to promote their brands, not to propel Blackburn Rovers to greatness as Jack Walker did - and not even out of a love for the glory of football.

The story today is that the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar is interested in buying a Premier League club. According to Alan Nixon in The People one target could be Rovers. I don't take much notice of Nixon, even on the relatively rare occasions when his punts turn out to be right I am reminded of the old phrase - 'even a stopped clock's right twice a day'.

So I simply don't take the speculation seriously and refuse to get carried away. I just don't see it happening to Rovers for a multitude of reasons - Venky's won't sell, Qatar isn't a good fit for Blackburn, and there are other far more attractive options for a fund that sponsors Barcelona and owns Paris St Germain.

The next few weeks are so crucial for Blackburn Rovers - they need to beat Wigan, draw at Stoke, beat Bolton, Swansea and West Brom at home. A win over Cardiff to get into the semis of the Carling Cup would give everyone a lift too. Sounds easy from Marple, probably looks like a piece of cake from Pune. Lose all of them and there's a disaster which no amount of money from Qatar, or anywhere, will make the slightest difference.

There are also some very important management issues to address - a proper chief executive, a proper chairman and a board that can run the business at base. That then requires financial management, a communications strategy and, probably, a new first team manager. But one thing is for sure, they can't carry on hitting the ball in India and hope it lands near the hole in Blackburn.

Stories of lives changed

2011-11-13T18:02:00.000Z

This video clip is just the latest documentary short from the Manchester Vision project, run by Manchester production company Riverhorse. This one focuses on the work of the Ancoats based charity The Mustard Tree, others are equally revealing and inspiring.

Mancheter Vision is a not-for-profit initiative that produces monthly films on people, organisations and campaigns that are seeking to create positive social change in the wider city region. The Mustard Tree charity is one such initiative.

A link to the Manchester Vision project is here.

Mad in Belfast, Made in Belfast

2011-11-06T10:17:00.001Z

Given I've been over to Belfast so much this year, I've taken a keener interest than average in the history and heritage of this unique city.

Last night I finally finished Kevin Myers' mesmerising account of his decade there in the 1970s. It is a horrific and, at times, unsettling tale. He doesn't hold much back from outing his own personal demons and weaknesses, which rather separates it from a straightforward historical account. That is hard work on the reader at first, but once you accept him, it makes for an honest and heartfelt recording of a city gripped by a particularly savage collective madness.

What I've experienced has been all of the good stuff about Belfast - the eager and rather emboldened sense that this place will succeed against all the odds. I look around at people I meet with a real feeling of awe. There is a real appetite for normality and a better life - I mean, there is everywhere, but in Belfast it is particularly acute. You can feel it this week as they have embraced the arrival of the MTV Awards.

Coincidentally, this morning, with much of this on my mind, I read Jay Rayner's review of Made in Belfast, a restaurant I've been to and enjoyed. There's nothing factually wrong with the piece by a writer I'm proud to call my favourite food critic in the British press; he wasn't patronising or snooty about the food, nor was he mean about the city in the way some critics love to be. Jay is also upholstered like a proper restaurant critic, which made this place just right for him. But I was disappointed with his review because I very much enjoyed the food in Made in Belfast and was happy with the choices I made when I went with a large party. In fact, we all were. That's the luck of the draw on these occasions. I also enjoyed the ambience and informality of the place, as Jay Rayner did. It's just that he wasn't too taken with the menu and the rather forensic account of each dish - or the need to list the produce. I think that's forgivable, especially as the character of the place is rather given away in the name. I do however bow to his far better knowledge of food and think it's such a shame his Tandoori wings weren't crispy and that the food was "relentless".

But, here's the thing. It's Jay Rayner's first review in Belfast, I hope it won't be his last. But there's a real passage for any city towards acceptance and normality - and one of those albeit very minor staging posts on that long road is a rotten review of one of a city's restaurants by a disgruntled critic from a national newspaper and, as importantly, the debate about its merits that follows.

Preston bus station - a work of genius?

2011-11-01T20:56:00.000Z

Pic from BDP

I've never been convinced by the argument that Preston bus station represents a work of architectural marvel. For something so substantial and so ambitious to work it has to at least connect with the users of that space. It was misunderstood and misused at street level. It became neglected by an ignorant authority. The marvel of it from the outside is of the curves of the car park above. It is a structure that divides opinion, for sure.

An exhibition at the CUBE gallery celebrates some of the amazing work of architectural firm BDP, for it was they, from socialist/modernist roots to a globalised future. It is a quite marvellous presentation; really educative and quite seductive. But don't take my word for it, read Neil Tague's blog on it here.,

Now here's a thing. Back in my teenage 1980s a friend of mine, Russell Colman used to invite a few of us to stay at his house. It was always good fun and we had some laughs, as teenage lads would. His stepfather would put Radio 4 on in the morning and the well appointed cottage was full of good books and copies of this hitherto undiscovered magazine called Private Eye. I would go so far as to say that Eye changed my life - it gave me a cheeky urge for satire, inspired me to do my own fanzine, to pursue journalism and not to take politics and the powerful too seriously. I never got round to expressing anything resembling respect or gratitude towards the master of the house, teenagers tend not to.

The man was Keith Ingham, architect of Preston bus station, who I learned, died in 1995. There's a professional obituary of him here. I never had the inclination or the manners to say this at the time, but sorry for abusing your patience, Mr Ingham, and thanks for introducing me to the Eye.

What is going on at Blackburn Rovers?

2011-11-01T20:27:00.001Z

As regular Marple Leaf readers will know, I haven't been protesting and ranting about Steve Kean, the manager of Blackburn Rovers. I think it's ultimately a futile exercise. I think Kean is a symptom of a much more serious issue - the hijacking of a senior football club by a super agent and the mismanagement by proxy by clueless owners.

I asked last season what money Venky's had used to buy Rovers. The Walker Trust never thought any of the Indian buyers who showed an interest were serious. They simply thought they'd fail to come up with the money. Whether they are doing it with other people's money, or borrowed money is the killer question. Many of the new signings have been free transfers and the Phil Jones money seems to have vanished. I've never been convinced the Venky's understood even the most basic details of how to run a football club prior to the purchase.

It is an abject shambles, a hopeless mess.

The video above may not work, and it may get taken off YouTube, but it makes for horrible viewing. It wasn't me that made it by the way, but a lad called Andy Rothwell.

Francesca Simon at the MLF

2011-10-30T21:03:00.000Z

We went to see Francesca Simon last week, the author of the Horrid Henry series. There's a prefectly good report on another website here. The boys loved meeting her too.

Her new children's book is set around the British Museum and the statues there. She took a lot longer to write it, but she put ever so much thought into it. I'll let you know what the boys thought of it.

Creative and media are moving on

2011-10-29T17:58:00.001Z

There was a useful debate on Thursday as part of CityCo's conversation series. A decent opportunity for the city centre managment to keep businesses up to date with various goings on. Peter Salmon was very impressive - as you'd expect. The Head of BBC North talks a good game and conveys the passion of the whole BBC project.

There's a good piece in the Telegraph today, here.

The other speakers were two big favourites of mine, Lou Cordwell and Sue Woodward who both mentioned the shortage of capital for the technology and creative businesses sprouting up. Rightly, that needs addressing and it is the top priority.

There was a question from the floor that said something along the lines of "yes, yes, we've heard it all before" and said the Manchester swagger was in danger of being overstated. Although the panel didn't invoke the memory of Tony Wilson, the questioner anticipated they were about to.

Sat next to me was a wise professional of these parts, with his daughter, who is on work experience at a big firm in Manchester. She had sat gripped throughout the discussion. She leaned over to her Dad and asked this question: "who's Tony Wilson?"I don't think the great man would have wanted it any other way.

Why it's OK to like Tintin and why he isn't a fascist

2011-10-26T19:42:00.001Z

We are all massively excited about the new Tintin film. It's been a long time coming, but I really hope that it's as good as people are suggesting. Tintin is a marvellous character and a noble role model for young men.

What I like about the stories is the way that Herge matures and improves his sense of humour. The way Captain Haddock changes from a hopeless drunk to be a courageous and loyal friend. I recently read Flight 714 to our youngest son and the layers of meaning are magical, particularly in the unravelling of the back story to Rastapopolus, Tintin's evil nemesis.

Even taking aside the crude racism of the Congo book, which I blogged on back here, and there are some abusive racist names used by Haddock in The Crab With The Golden Claws - which are the utterings of an unreconstructed angry alcoholic - I still compelled to defend Tintin from lazy attitudes that he was "right wing" or even a "fascist". That slur pops up again here in an excellent analysis in The Australian.

But the essential Tintin, forged in wartime, never really changed. For ever young, for ever apolitical, his adoption by Spielberg and Hollywood is final proof of the timeless universality of his appeal as the Peter Pan of the cartoon strip. Remi did not take a stand against an evil ideology. Instead, he worked tirelessly, while the world tore itself apart, to create a character without beliefs who always did the right thing.

That's a delicious way of putting it. Tintin displays virtues of humanity, forgiveness, morality, justice and humility. He lives a relatively modest lifestyle even as the stories unfold and Haddock becomes wealthy. Herge clearly dabbles in mysticism, sci-fi and even vaudeville, but never dark politics.

I am delighted that Tintin has been reclaimed and renewed for the new century. It's been a long time coming.

Prize Culture debate at the Manchester Literature Festival

2011-10-22T12:53:00.000Z

Picture courtesy of Jon Atkin

A new experience this week, hosting a session on "prize culture" at the Manchester Literature Festival. The panel (left) was a brainy quintet of poets, writers and academics, all of whom were lovely to work with. Blogger Valerie O'Riordan has written a detailed account of who said what. It's here, if you want to link.

She says: "A couple of hours before this year’s Booker Prize winner is to be announced, The University Of Manchester’s own cabal of bookish experts turns out at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation to thrash out the advantages, complications and intricacies of literary prize culture. The debate is all the more timely in that this year’s Booker competition has been dogged by more than the usual speculation, with Dame Stella Rimington, head of the judging panel, announcing that she wanted "readability" (see link), and Jeanette Winterson, responding in theGuardian, saying that, in contrast, great literature ought to demand "time and effort" What’s happening? cry the commentators. What’s the remit of literary prizes? Have they replaced critics as the arbiters of public taste? Have the publishers’ publicity machines obliterated the rewarding of quality? Do we really need the Booker? Never fear, dear reader – our panel has stepped boldly into the breach to figure it all out.

"The event is facilitated by journalist Michael Taylor, and joining him are most of the staff of the University’s Centre For New Writing – Vona Groarke, MJ Hyland, Ian McGuire and John McAuliffe – as well as Jerome de Groot, Senior Lecturer in the English Department; between them, we’ve got poets and novelists, academics, literary prize judges and prize-winners – including, in Hyland, a former Booker shortlistee."

The main point was that literary prizes, like the Booker, may be flawed, they may exist for underlying marketing reasons, but on balance they have a place in the cultural firmament. The same could equally be said of art and music prizes. We also touched on how literary criticism is evolving through online reviews and the evolving proliferation of literary blogs.

The whole festival is amazing. I love the breadth of ideas that the range of venues and format has brought to Manchester. Last Saturday I saw readings from John Niven and Emma Jane Unsworth. On Tuesday I sat transfixed through a debate on Norweigan and Dutch short stories. There is an appetite for different cultural experiences and patterns of thought that the festivals bring. It's an explosion, a celebration of something extraordinary, rather than the very ordinary that we can so easily wallow in. It's exciting too that it's all happening here.

Rude boys!

2011-10-16T18:03:00.001Z

Specials at Manchester Apollo, pic courtesy of Joanna Simpson

After missing out on seeing The Specials, Selecter and Madness on the Two Tone tour in 1979 at Lancaster University, I finally got to see The Specials on Friday night. It was a magnificent nostalgia trip for a band I still love listening to. Musically they displayed an incredible range - at one point there were 13 performers on stage - the band, the brass section and strings helped them rattle through all the old favourites. My pal Richard Bell, who sorted the night, says they've got better from when he went to see them two years ago.

I've debated the merits of these reunion gigs before. On balance, I'm in favour. I probably wouldn't go and see Stone Roses who are rumoured to be doing a couple of gigs, I won't bother with From The Jam again, much as I enjoyed the last outing.

For me the audience was fascinating as well. Skins, rude boys, mods and 100s of paunchy blokes dusting off the old Fred Perry to lap up a feast of memories and hear some echoes from down the years. I certainly spotted a few old faces from places as diverse as the terraces at Ewood as well as the boardrooms of modern Manchester.

We went in memory of Tim Edwards, who wasn't able to join us.

Between the Wars - a song for Marple

2011-10-16T17:36:00.000Z

A tongue-in-cheek reworking of Billy Bragg's Between the Wars by Carl Cieka in protest at the Plans of Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College to sell their Hibbert Lane Campus for development as a supermarket. More info at http:/www.marple-in-action.org.uk

Doing it for yourself

2011-10-12T18:22:00.002Z

The unemployment figures make for harsh reading. According to New Economy, the Manchester agency tasked with promoting economic activity, the rise recently has been especially harsh in the young.

"The number of jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) claimants in Greater Manchester grew by 1,170 and was recorded at 82,310 in September 2011 – a monthly rise of 1.4%. National and regional JSA numbers also increased from August to September – by 0.2% and 1.4% respectively."

To bring home the human side of it, there's a journalist of my vague acquaintance - Nick Hyde - who has joined those ranks. I don't know him well, but he's written a calm and collected blog about it, here, which has taken some guts.

I detect too that he's got a few irons in the fire. More and more the self-employment and start-up business route is appealing to people like Nick. Not just to those who have had unemployment forced upon them, but for those for whom grinding away at the same thing just doesn't seem worth it any more.

A venture capitalist of this parish, Richard Young, is even looking for experienced managers to back in start-ups, something many private equity and venture funds seemed to have given up on a long time ago. He's come up with the phrase "management breakout" and I wrote a bit about it here. I tend to squirm at some of the rhetoric around start-ups and new business. There is a tendency to make a serious endeavour into something like the Apprentice or the X Factor, but there is an opportunity here for investors even if banks aren't there as they should be.

Much as I'm sure the likes of Nick want to avoid hanging round the house reading books, I can heartily recommend a great new title by Luke Johnson. Start It Up - why running your own business is easier than you think reads like a real go-to-it guide for anyone thinking of making a leap on their own. Plenty of people dream, but few take the plunge to do it for themselves. There are inspirational stories of people who made the leap, but also useful pointers on what to avoid and what not to do. It's also rare for a business book in that it's very well written.

I've always had a massive admiration for the self-employed. Walking around the streets of Marple early in the morning, while walking the dog, I see plenty of them getting into their vans and setting off on jobs as plasterers, window fitters and builders, etc. This is the army of hard working grafters that keep the economy ticking along. My Dad was a self-employed milkman until he sold up last year, though we made sacrifices as a family, that independence of spirit and that control over his own destiny was a freedom he loved and gave him the chance to diversify with his farm.

The economy is dreadful, there is clearly less money around, but I think there is a boldness and a zeal out there. People will struggle, they will be hungry, but they will also get up, attack the day and try and make the best of things. They are the true heroes - you hear politicians pay lip service to them, but I really wish the media would recognise this growing movement. They need all the encouragement they can get.

My mate #14 - Ian Currie

2011-10-09T15:26:00.000Z

My random shuffle of my address book has come up with Ian Currie, the latest addition to the roll of honour that is the my mate series on this blog.

I've known Ian for 11 years. He's a fellow Rovers fan and has season tickets close to where we used to sit in the Blackburn End upper tier. I fondly remember celebrating together when Rovers were promoted at Preston in 2001.

Until a couple of years ago he was in business with another friend of mine, Richard Hughes. Here's a profile I did on them back in 2005. The fact that the two of them have split was a source of some upset. I like them both very much and admire their dealmaking skills and their ablity to add value to businesses. It's not the time or the place to go into the reasons for the split here, but they were a formidable double act in their heyday and I'm proud to count them both as friends still.

Ian and Richard also grew a much coveted client base who they introduced to investment opportunities. It's a matter of public record that their wealthy backers included some old northern family trusts as well as footballers and entrepreneurial business people. Ian is also close to Sam Allardyce who is an active investor; I still kick myself that I royally cocked up a diary date to have lunch at Ian's house with Sam, he rang me as I was arriving in Chester, when I should have been in Lancashire. That link between the two dates back to when Ian was a director of Bolton Wanderers, a purely business arrangement that he enjoyed while it lasted. I imagine Phil Gartside, Bolton chairman, isn't the easiest guy to work with and eventually Ian left the board. We have enjoyed some sweet victories at the Reebok since.

Ian is also a great supporter of good causes (not just Rovers) and particularly of the Prince's Trust, the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital Charity Appeal and of the Lowry at Salford. We worked together on an event a couple of years ago with Theo Paphitis, another close friend of Ian - a report is here. We also played on opposing sides at the Reebok at this match in May.

By a remarkable coincidence there's tabloid speculation today suggesting Ian has been over to India and is about to be invited onto the board at Blackburn Rovers, something I suggested here back in February. This would be a very good move for Rovers, but I'm confident Ian and his pal Ian Battersby would require assurances that things are going to change and they won't be "yes men" to people who are taking our club down. I certainly hope so.

Meeting Hooky at the BBC at Salford Quays

2011-10-09T13:37:00.003Z

We had a great experience this morning as I was a guest on Gordon Burns' programme on the BBC Radio Manchester AND Lancashire. The first such show from Quay House at MediaCity. You will be able to listen to it for a while if you click the iPlayer link here.

I was reviewing the Sunday papers with Maria McGeoghan, the editor of the Manchester Evening News, who is always very lovely company. We picked up a few serious highlights to start with: Steve Jobs, the rising popularity of crafts and a good piece on climate change that Maria found. In the second part we highlighted TV shopping, the X Factor, Christina Aguilera's backstage demands, internships and I had a bit of a rant about the hopeless cause that his Blackburn Rovers under Venky's.

It was great to be broadcasting from a studio with a view and one where Rachel and the kids could watch from the office outside. It was also a fantastic experience watching Gordon Burns work, he has a great manner about him. He carries such authority but he also interviews and discusses in a very easy way. No wonder Sir Alex Ferguson wanted his first BBC interview to be with Gordon. But as much as he makes it look easy, he prepares very methodically.

The guest after us was the great Peter Hook from New Order. We had a good chat about his forthcoming concerts and the experience of RAW 2010 when he was interviewed by John Bishop. I was ready to apologise if he hadn't, as it was my idea. His daughter took this picture of us next to his old boss and our much missed friend Tony Wilson. I wish I'd told him how much his music has meant to me over the last 25 years.

There's a growing realisation that the BBC move to Salford isn't just a good idea, but a popular reality. It has started to put the inaccessible BBC just that bit closer to the heartbeat of the nation. Yes, this is good for the BBC, but it's also important for the North too. This piece in the Spectator by William Cook is refreshingly positive without being patronising. Hopefully the rest of the country will awaken to what greatness lies within the North, and appreciate that not only will great things happen, but that they have been happening for years and this is just another step.

Tim Edwards

2011-10-07T19:22:00.000Z

I've just been for a long walk down Marple golf course to try and make sense of a rotten week. It's significant because it was the place I last spent a proper amount of time with my friend Tim Edwards, who died last weekend.

As the obituary notice here says he was only 46 and leaves a loving wife Gale and two daughters Carla and Ellie. It also paints a very accurate picture of the Tim I knew: funny, warm, clever, unorthodox and quite brilliant at what he did. But what has also come through from the other people I've spoken to about him was that he was a true friend; someone who was loyal and kind who had a capacity to listen to people's troubles and offer a friendly word. He took his responsibilities as a supportive friend very seriously.

He was also incredibly honest. If he thought something was rubbish, or someone wasn't good at what they did, he wouldn't waste time being diplomatic, he'd tell you straight. I found that very refreshing.

What is particularly upsetting is that Tim died while out cycling; training for a trip to Italy he was planning. He was one of the fittest 40-somethings I know. He ran marathons, he had captained Leeds University football team and he was still very was active, he wasn't a big drinker (in fact, on our golf trips to Portugal he was a lightweight on that score). He looked lean and healthy.

I struggle to find any words of comfort at times like this. But there is a reservoir of love for Tim and a deep sense of loss and hurt from everyone who's life he touched. He was a remarkable man. His life was too short, horribly short, but that love we feel now and that loss we feel is a tribute to the mark he made. Rest in peace, my friend.

Tim's wife Gale has set up a page where you can add tributes to Tim and asked for donations to a special charity at the Salford diocese. You can donate here.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

2011-10-06T20:48:00.002Z

This talk by Steve Jobs is worth reading again. Amidst this outpouring of respect and emotion for an amazing man that no-one really knew, I'm feeling very sad this week as I've lost a dear, dear friend. I'll write something about it over the weekend, but it's been a pretty horrible week.

The Romiley reek

2011-10-03T20:24:00.003Z

There is an appalling smell in Romiley at the moment. You get a lung full of it on the road from Marple Garden Centre up Otterspool, then also from the train on the Marple side. I asked the Stockport Council leader Dave Goddard about it when we met him a couple of weeks ago and he said he was looking into it. Has anyone got to the bottom of it?

Venky's invite fans to India - but will they listen?

2011-10-03T20:20:00.001Z

More grim news from Ewood Park. Two defeats before a nonsense trip to India. I genuinely despair. Steve Kean has been given money in the transfer window to build a team, though my understanding is not that much money changed hands for the likes of Yakubu and Scott Dann's deal was on the never never.

Even after Saturday, the moment has passed to demonstrate for his sacking. The bigger problem is we have a club with no infrastructure and no management team.The PR stunts the owners are involved in are a joke - flying fans over to Pune for a meeting is just stupid. And why are they continuing to do interviews about footballing matters? - successful owners never do that - Jack Walker didn't, Abramovich doesn't, Sheikh Mansour doesn't. They are making a laughing (chicken) stock of Blackburn Rovers.But as well as the fans who are going over to Pune, I understand that they are also meeting with a serious Rovers supporting bloke, who would ordinarily make a solid chairman or even take an executive position. But this guy has met them once already and was ferocious in his criticism of them. It would suit the Rao family to have such a figurehead, but he wouldn't risk his own personal credibility being a puppet show in this circus.

It's my understanding too that Jerome Anderson is still very much in the picture.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Steve Kean is not the problem, he is the symptom. The sooner Venky's take the job of ownership seriously, realise the limits of their expertise, appoint a management team who will give them credible advice and not rely on advisers and agents who line their own pockets, the sooner they will realise he is not a proper manager - and find someone capable of doing it properly. Until then though, they'd probably sack Kean and replace him with Leonardo di Caprio.

Great weekend in Rome

2011-09-25T18:10:00.001Z

Rome was fantastic, a really amazing city. The proximity of ancient and modern is mind blowing. We packed so much in to the short time we had, but there is still plenty left to lure us back again.

For us the highlight was probably the Scavi Tour, a guided exploration of the tombs directly under St Peter's basilica and including a view of what may well be the tomb of the first Pope. The entrance into the church itself was breathtaking and unique to our small group of 12. We climbed a small staircase and were immediately faced with the amazing spectacle of the epicentre of Catholicism in all it's glory.

I've done reviews on TripAdvisor for our hotel (not great), and two restaurants (one brilliant, one OK).

An open top bus tour took us from one essential stop off to another, but we pretty much walked everywhere, within reason, and just enjoyed soaking up the energy of the place; stopping off for a drink or an ice cream whenever the mood took us.

We love Italy and for us the most gorgeous Italian experience came when we had dinner at a small neighbourhood restaurant near our central hotel. As it filled up with families and couples we started to soak up that love of family, food and conversation. Italy is sometimes so chaotic that it's maddening - and you occasionally get glimpses of why the country lurches from one crisis to the next - but there was a real sense of what matters most.

Thanks to everyone who sent us tips, either on email, through the blog, or via Twitter. All very useful.

Open your mind, read some, learn some

2011-09-18T19:32:00.000Z

There are yet more events emerging that provide an intellectual stimulus to Northern life. The Manchester Literature Festival is almost upon us - I love it's stubborn and insolent commitment to highbrow writing and poetry - Latvian Poetry night and a refusal to cede to a slightly showbiz tendency creeping in at other book festivals, such as Hay.

That said, the gatherings are fun. I had a lovely time at the lunch on Wednesday - there's a piece about it on the MLF blog here. I was very flattered to get a couple of mentions in Kate Fox's poem about the festival. I'll link to the video when it's up - mine went a bit pear shaped.

I'm chairing a discussion on the 18th of October about Prize Culture at the Anthony Burgess Centre. Here are the details. Please support festivals like this, I think they raise the bar of life and culture in the North.

When in Rome

2011-09-18T09:08:00.001Z

We're off to Rome next weekend for Rachel's birthday, just the two of us. I've only ever been to the eternal city on business, visiting a TV studio run by the Vatican, hanging out with some lads from Sony Italia and staying in a grim airport hotel. And that was 12 years ago. Any tips, hints and advice will be very gratefully received - a bottle of Barolo for the best one.

Bennett grasps nettle to land Marple pie crown

2011-09-18T09:04:00.000Z

Steve Bennett won the Samuel Oldknow pie competition at the Marple Food Festival yesterday. Another superb day and another table full of entries for us pie loving judges to get our teeth into.

His nettle pie had an almost perfect firm crust, embedded with local nettles, with a spicy filling bulked through with cheese and tomato. It was a fitting and courageous entry from the man who won last year with his crayfish pie. This guy is the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of Marple.

The "professional" category was won by a delicious Ham Hock pie submitted by the Crown at Hawk Green. A nice twist to the tale is the chef there was a previous winner when he worked at Grenaby Farm bakery. He's still doing the business and clearly knows his pies.

First win for Rovers

2011-09-17T20:17:00.001Z

I never got round to writing a post saying all the reasons why I wouldn't be going on the Kean Out protest today. I think it was negative and pointless. It had all the potential to get ugly but I'm so so glad it didn't. The people behind it are well meaning and passionate, but, I feel, wrong. I don't think Steve Kean is a Premier League manager, but he's all we've got at the moment. He's actually a symptom of the misrule of Venky's, not the root cause of the problems.

But anyway, the real reason I wasn't going on a pre-match protest, was because I wasn't going to the match. This is our season of being part-timers. It's a wider lifestyle choice, part of my falling out of love with football generally and its elevated status of being THE MOST IMPORTANT THING - LIKE EVER! and, I confess, I'm massively frustrated with the situation at Ewood Park. Something has had to give in our lives, there is more going on than I can possibly explain here, but it feels better already.

But, I was thrilled to follow the match today. And I look forward to watching it later as the first game on Match of the Day. This really is a season of surprises.

911 - Ten years on

2011-09-11T12:51:00.000Z

On September the 10th 2001 I sat at Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC and admired the view of the Pentagon. It was the last day of a long weekend in the capital of a country I always enjoyed visiting. As I landed at Manchester Airport on the morning of September the 11th I was still buzzing with the highlights of the trip - the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial and all the occasional delights of a trip to any American city - people, food, conversations and the ambience of a place at ease with itself.

The violence of it, the outrageous wanton killing is just dreadful. You keep hearing the same horror from those in New York, the sights of people jumping from the Twin Towers will never leave you.

Personally, I think too that the terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 did so from Dulles Airport, where I was just a few hours before. And that I was at the Capitol the day before, which was the intended target of Flight 93.

Did the world change forever? Probably. Did we change as individuals? I don't think so. I know it affected me, hardened some of my views, but also shook up my own view of liberal values, faith, justice and what America stands for in the world. I still get upset that people seem to have forgotten it so quickly. I still believe those responsible were from the joyless and distorted fringe of Islam, a religion that truly believes in peace. Their death cult has a hatred of our way of life that is not fuelled by the things that make liberals angry, but gives them the very freedom to consume, create and behave as they do.

Practically speaking, I was still reeling from the shock of the attacks, when I heard that a special adviser to the government suggested it was "a good day to bury bad news". If that was the level of cynicism of party politics, then I wanted no part of it. The Labour Party membership was torn up, and much as I've shifted views on a number of issues, I won't be joining any other party either. It's not for me.

I blogged on how the fall out from 911 shifted my outlook here and here.

Everyone should take time today to reflect - pray if that's what you want to call it - that our reactions and intentions should be peaceful, loving and forgiving.

Desperately want to say YES to something in Marple

2011-09-10T19:14:00.001Z

The best point to emerge from the rally in Marple today against the location of a supermarket on Hibbert Lane was a positive thought for the future of our community. Hopefully it should give everyone present something to consider about the future of Marple beyond disruption and house prices. Our local MP Andrew Stunell (speaking, left) made some excellent points, and concluded by asking: "What kind of place do you want Marple to be in 10 years time, in 15 years?"

The warm response to his point was quite uplifting. He is opposed to the plans by the College to sell their site on Hibbert Lane to a supermarket, the plans would be against planning guidance, against planning policy and in the teeth of a local action plan that the council and what passes for a local community body has signed up to. The passage of the Localism Bill, he says, will give greater emphasis to the needs of communities. He is palpably not a hypocrite for pursuing this essential reform. Marple has development needs to promote community cohesion, amenities and economic development. Hopefully everyone engaged in this very important debate can contribute to a viable plan about what those needs are and how they can be achieved.

This issue has also flushed out the local politicians. They are used to apathy and a "behind the scenes" way of doing their business. No more. Not on this issue. And I think they all need to come clean about what part they have played in consultation with the college governors - even when they were college governors.

I feel grumpy and reactionary being part of a "no" campaign. Instinctively I favour progress and new developments. But this is all wrong. It is now important that the college governors think again about pursuing a sale of land that is against the planning guidance, opposed by the council and against the overwhelming wishes of the local community. And when they have we can all get on with debating a brighter future for Marple.

Corrected on the 11th September.

Made up Manchester

2011-09-06T19:57:00.002Z

Very amusing contributions to the concept of a made up Manchester facts on Twitter today. Here are my favourite 10. One is mine, I am allowed to laugh at my own jokes on here.

Magic buses are so-called as they are run on ecstacy tablets confiscated from the Hacienda in the 90s

Manchester was created by the men of Chester after being driven out by the womenfolk in the feminism riots of 1682

The M60 was built by the Romans as a defence wall around Mancunia to protect from marauding Celts.

Corbieres Wine Bar was originally owned by the Grand National winning racehorse of the same name.

New York Street in the city centre was in fact originally called New Amsterdam Street

From next January Princess Street will be renamed Howards Way

The Peak District, Lake District and Penines are man made and were built by the people of Manchester to maximise rainfall

The king of the ancient kingdom of Mancunia was Affleck. His palace is where Affleck's now sits

Spinningfields, Spinning Buildings and Spinning Bedroom Ceilling are all in the Drunk Quarter

The Manchester Canals were built to export water from the city for re-sale as it has a surplus supply

The village of Clovelly

2011-09-05T20:12:00.000Z

In a blog a while ago - over a year ago - I mentioned the private village of Clovelly in Devon. Anyway, there have been some replies. I thought it only fair to mention it as I've been told I'm wrong. I don't think I am.

The original blog, with comments, is here.

Fixing stuff

2011-09-04T19:17:00.001Z

One of the kids broke the door off our washing machine. Rachel called the shop we bought it from - Comet - and they were incredibly inefficient. They also frightened us with quotes ranging from £120 to £200. For a door! Even an estimate was going to start the clock ticking for a call out charge. I had a look at it and worked out we could get a new door. It turned out we didn't even need that. We needed an "inner door rim" which once I'd logged in the spare parts code was going to cost me ... £28, including next day despatch. We needed a slightly strange screw set - which amazingly, we have - and it took about ten minutes of fiddling to get on.

Why am I boring you with this tale of domestic nonsense? It's the shattering of a mystery, brought on by the ability to research and buy on the internet. We are so used to being mystified by the availability of parts and the complexity of the tools to fix things that we just fork out.

Our next challenge is a Flip video camera, which is made by by Cisco. It was ace when it worked, but now it doesn't. It just stopped charging up on holiday, which was a bit rubbish. I've tried to fix it, followed all the on-line instructions which are pretty limited. Now we're trying to send it back. Still no joy. We're in this Kafkaesque world of American websites which won't allow me to register where I live because it's an incorrect ZIP code. The product code on the back is so small none of us could read it. Seriously. We just want a new one, it doesn't work, it should work. No wonder Cisco are pulling out of this product, they're making good things go bad and can't handle the backlash.

In many ways power is shifting to the consumer, but the big companies are conceding their control in limited ways, before reasserting it in others. This week feels like a score draw.

Ian McEwan's Solar - book review in a lift

2011-09-04T18:06:00.003Z

While reading this book on holiday, over a fortnight, I stopped a couple of times, I turned to Rachel and said - I think he's losing the plot this bloke. Ian McEwan has always been smug and a bit snooty about working class characters and here he sneers with some degree of unsympathetic contempt at two important characters, a tradesman and a young goofy scientist. Even Michael Beard, the main character, with his six marriages is that exaggerated grotesque creation that he and his mate Martin Amis seem to revel in building up with layers of unsympathetic unpleasantness, while still leaving you utterly in thrall to their perspective. All of that's probably an accurate reflection of a "voice" and an "ear" for such things. So these tricks, these flights of humour and fancy - like the discomfort of an ice suit and taking a toilet break in the Arctic Circle - turn out well. Similarly, each linguistic trick, or plot twist, equally turns up good. The packet of crisps on a train with a scary fellow passenger story is the strongest example - I'd first came across it in a book about Urban Legends in 1986 - link here - and then Douglas Adams used it in So Long and Thanks For All The Fish, and, ahem, I'm sure Jeffrey Archer has too. I was amazed McEwan was using it, but it comes good as a plot device. As a whole Solar deserves a standing ovation - a big bravo. It's a bold and different story, and just when you think he's disappeared up the funnel of his own self importance, he pops back. His research and grasp of science and venture capital is also commendable, as it makes credible a fabulous story of our time. Enjoyable, compelling and gripping. And genuinely funny.

Great food and drink in Marple

2011-09-04T13:08:00.000Z

I like to try and keep on top of new businesses in and around Marple.

The Marple Festival is coming up later this month with a fabulous programme of events.

The long awaited Purple Pakora has opened opposite the station on Brabyn's Brow. There's an excellent review of it here on the Mellor View blog. I say excellent, because I believe it to be fair and thorough. It's not just saying nice things for the sake of it.

I was sad to see the Urban Gypsy cafe and deli close before we'd even had chance to visit. It was in an awkward location on the main road and has launched into a tough local market. I've been delighted to sample both local delis in recent weeks, but that's because I've been out and about in Marple and they are easy to pop in and use. Toast has consolidated by moving the wine business into the deli on Derby Way, which I'm sure is a sensible business move, but it leaves another shop vacant on Market Street. All Things Nice always seems busy at the weekends and has had rave reviews for the supper nights.

It's as well to celebrate the success of the businesses that are also surviving. It is incredibly tough out there at the moment, so do try and support these local businesses. And at a time when the sense of community and local enterprise is under such threat, it is as well to remember that you need to appreciate what you have on your doorstep until it is too late.

New Rovers podcast - check it out

2011-09-03T07:27:00.003Z

This is a recording of a Blackburn Rovers podcast I did with a couple of good lads called Stuart and Dale. I'm pretty pleased with it. It's got a decent pace to it, has a smattering of humour and some decent footballing analysis by Dale. The funny thing is, we've never met. We do it all on Skype.

The Shadow Line and Page Eight - good telly

2011-08-30T22:24:00.002Z

No-one does smart thrillers better than the BBC. This week we have enjoyed the double treat of Page Eight, a smart and contemporary David Hare spy drama, swiftly followed off by our completion of the boxed set of The Shadow Line.

I won't compare a series of seven with a feature length drama, but they both had superb casts and well written, tightly directed scripts. I feel more comfortable recommending Page Eight, however. I can just above forgive it's most ludicrous plot development involving Bill Nighy and Rachel Weisz. However, hey, both brought a lightness and a subtle wit to the screen, even in times of great seriousness.

Lightness and wit isn't something you'd accuse The Shadow Line of. But, in the finest traditions of British TV drama it pulled an impressive cast - Antony Sher, Christopher Eccleston, Stephen Rea you will know about. Rea, in particular, was mesmerising and terrifying as Gatehouse, the most accomplished killer since the Borgias, as he was described towards the end. While Eccleston was as tragic and as doomed as he was in Cracker. But The Shadow Line will also prove to be a breakthrough for other impressive actors who starred such as Chiwetel Eijofor, Keirston Wareing, Rafe Spall and Freddie Fox who you may not be so familiar with. All turned in performances of brooding, competing tension that suggested a change of allegiance and confusion was never far away. We were gripped.

But, on balance, it was a deflating and depressing experience. Nothing changes, yet everybody, mostly, dies. It was a gloomy and ultimately ludicrous turn of events. It was laced with a pessimistic view of human nature and motivation, reinforcing the view too that no good deed goes unpunished.

And here's another thing. It's probably a budgetry issue, but though there were some scenes shot noticeably and obviously in London, most of it was shot in the Isle of Man. At no point did the story reflect this quick shift to hillsides and harbours, seemingly very close to London as to be seamless. This became ludicrous, especially for the most significant final scenes. I'm sure the Isle of Man Tourist Board and Film Council will be pleased with the outcome. The latter for hosting such a noted drama, and the former for managing to be disassociated from such nastiness.

Jerome Anderson and the rat's nest at Rovers

2011-08-29T12:43:00.000Z

A story in the Daily Mail, here, suggests Blackburn Rovers have paid over the odds for players, or rather have paid hefty commissions to agents. This may also go some way to explaining why Steve Kean has been unable to land as many of the transfer targets as he hoped.

Some fingers point towards the drink driving manager and his agent, Jerome Anderson, as the problem. One of Kean's summer signings afterall was Myles Anderson - son of Jerome - a player with no relevant experience of first class football. It actually beggars belief.

But through all the transfer dealing, agents payments and the relationship between this agency and others, the biggest question I don't think has been answered is this: did Venky's borrow money to buy Rovers, who did they borrow it from, and did Jerome Anderson get paid for advising them to do so?

Being on TV

2011-08-28T15:15:00.000Z

I was on TV last week talking about the Co-operative Group's results. The jist of it is this: they made incredibly good profits last year. They have made a little less this year. The boss says it is a tough trading environment, in fact the toughest. They are trying to break into Big Four, and are up against two of the most ruthless commercial operators in the world. Because of their membership structure, they can build for the long term. I'd link to it, but I'm not allowed, even though I recorded a clip on my iPhone. Still not been stopped in the street yet.

Returning the love

2011-08-28T15:01:00.002Z

The Manchester response to the tear up of a few weeks ago has been very positive. A campaign called I Love Manchester has been quickly and enthusiastically thrown together. The broom and dustpan army that assembled the morning after was the first manifestation. The campaign was the next step.

In all honesty the campaign isn't particularly original in its conception, modern in its execution or ambitious in scope. As it says here, it's a 30-year old take on a New York campaign. I seem to remember a reaction to a previous limp campaign spawned a new generation of thrusting doers who called themselves the McEnroe Group, and are now in positions of power and influence in the city. But this isn't then, either, so it's only right to support a positive statement of intent and an outpouring of civic pride. I have no intelligence on what Peter Saville makes of it.

But if it's all that comes out of this period of turbulence it would be a great shame. It's an opportunity to remind everyone of the strengths of the city, but also to set some realistic benchmarks for how the city can be improved. That will inevitably get political, but it will be a chance to think big and bold again. A lot of time has now passed since the last acts of audacity which have got Manchester so far - the Olympic bid, the Commonwealth Games, the reaction to the 1996 bomb and various property schemes. What degree of autonomy could the city region seek to attain? Does the city region need a Mayor? Or just the city of Manchester? What about some bold thinking on city planning, like banning cars from the core of the city centre altogether? What decisions can be taken at a city level on education, taxation and business rates? Where is Manchester positioned on the sixth wave of resource efficiency? What more can be done to extend co-operative structures in finance and business?

There are some intelligent lines in the sand here and here from John Leach and Dave Haslam - and both do so from their own very different perspectives. The best way of showing your love for Manchester would be to contribute to a very important debate from your own point of view, wherever you are in this brilliant city.

Cottonopolis - new gear from Oi Polloi

2011-08-22T20:39:00.000Z

Popped into Oi Polloi today. Delighted to see they've developed their own label called Cottonopolis. If you are so inclined, there's a very smart piece in the latest issue of Pica Post by Ian Hough. Captures the essence very well.

Marple out in force to say NO

2011-08-22T20:26:00.000Z

This video is on You Tube, shot by a resident at the rally on Saturday the 20th of August.

What we did on our holidays

2011-08-21T20:41:00.001Z

This isn't really a twee blog about what we all get up to, well, maybe just a bit. This is our 9 year old son Matt's picture from one of our days on holiday (he did one for every day). Here we are skimming stones on Thirlmere, which is accurate, as is the landscape. The presence of a steamboat, SS LOL, is entirely made up.

Marple supermarket - the arguments for

2011-08-21T20:12:00.002Z

There was a good turnout at the march against proposals for our local college to sell their site in Marple to a supermarket. I've been wrestling with a couple of the arguments against the protestors, I think they are worth airing.

The first is that this campaign is hypocritical. That the protestors do their "big shop" in big supermarkets away from Marple, supermarkets that will have had the same ruinous effect on other communities. There will, to be fair, be plenty of evidence of this, there will be research to say that people round here do go to other supermarkets. I know they do. We do. There IS an argument against all big supermarkets, but this isn't it. At issue is the suitability of this location. Contained within this objection is the inevitable accusation of Nimbyism. You have to take this one on the chin. Of course people directly affected by noise, disruption and compulsory purchase orders will object to it. But look again, that's not why most people are opposed.

Another argument against the protestors is that some competition is needed against the monopoloy of the Co-operative in Marple. A large supermarket on a site the size of the huge Hibbert Lane campus would provide a shabby and overpriced small supermarket with competition. It may even be that the Co-operative have opposed other applications by Tesco, Asda or Sainsbury's to open a store in Marple, even on a site their group owns. Firstly, I don't dispute the competition argument at all. There is a retail core in Marple that contains multiples like Boots, Superdrug, Iceland as well as independent retailers. I'm sure the local traders wouldn't be doing cartwheels about a Tesco Express, or a Sainsbury's Local (similar to the one in Romiley), but again, that's not the issue here. Personally, I'd welcome more retailers stimulating the core. It would attract people to the other businesses. This proposal, the price tag on such a large piece of land, however, offers only the potential to simply attract people in their cars to a big tin shed, and then leave again. A splinter of this view, by the way, is the economic determinism of big retail. That their march is inevitable and irresistable. I don't even think the big supermarkets have that view any more.

The third argument I came up against was about the place needing to be "livened up" as the youngsters went elsewhere. I must admit, I'm all in favour of any amount of livening up of the right kind, but I don't see how a massive supermarket is an attraction for young people. I used to marvel at how so many pie shops and sandwich bars were supported. This is because of the 6th Form College, it would appear. I'd rather there were educational opportunities here, than over there, that this community imported, rather than exported young people.

The fourth argument is about the importance of jobs and investment, that Marple is getting major investment that should be welcomed. I agree that the council have a responsibility to discuss opportunities with employers and investors. But it's also about the right ones in the right places. This is the wrong place.

An offshoot of this view is that the collapse of the housing market leaves the college with no other options? Even if you accept that view, and I don't, then I'm sorry, but this really isn't our problem. There are a number of reasons why Cheadle & Marple College need to juggle their estate. There will also be a range of commercial barriers to how that process is managed. One of them will have to be the unsuitability of Marple for large retail.

Finally, there are various comments that split hairs on the issue. There are debates, mainly on the Marple messageboard, over politics and tactics. Let's face it, any campaign will have these and in the internet age, this has been amplified 1000 fold. Then there are discordant views that because various things are wrong with what we have in Marple, so it then follows that this is a conservative campaign that seeks to protect the mediocre and defend the mistakes of the past. Mistakes in planning and architecture have been made, of course they have, nobody is saying this is some kind of utopian community. But if this campaign succeeds, then it will also serve to remind everyone about what we have and how it is "that we are where we are". It is a massive generational opportunity to debate what kind of community we want to have in Marple. And I think the local council (the officials and the politicians), need to bear that in mind as they decide in secret what they think is best.

So, if you arrived here thinking this was a pro-supermarket change of heart, I notionally apologise. But only a bit. I called it "the arguments for" because that's what it is addressing. As you can see, none of them have swayed me. In fact, of all of the above, the only one I hesitated on was the first. Well, an element of it. Our Friday night chat on the Rose Hill flier pondered a few "what ifs" about who would build on the site. If it was a big ugly Tesco or Asda, then it is an easy side to take. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. But what if Booths or Waitrose had their eye on it? I would love a Booths here. I would love the prestige it would bring to the area. No question. But the fact remains, this site is off the centre. This site is unsuitable for big retail. This site is large. There is still much to be done in the centre. Booths and Waitrose would be welcome in Marple. But not on Hibbert Lane.

How Dare You Accuse Me of Inhumanity - Withnail tribute 3

2011-08-21T19:10:00.000Z

Manchester's historical traditions and the riots of 2011

2011-08-15T21:59:00.003Z

Shops were looted in Manchester, police were attacked. The poor and disenfranchised were making their voices heard after years of brutal repression and intolerable living conditions. The middle classes of Manchester were hated by the workers who seethed with injustice. No, not August 2011, but 1842, when the Chartist uprisings reached a crescendo.

And as the city reflected on the very week in 1819 that 15 people were killed and hundreds injured at Peterloo, when the Manchester Yeomanry attacked a crowd of protestors, it is well to reflect on the historical parallels with today and how we interpret the riots in the city centre and Salford. Indeed, Tristram Hunt MP did just that at a sparkling lecture on Peterloo at the People's History Museum on Friday night. He concluded, rightly, briefly, that the riots were an outbreak of horrific criminality. But history never ends at a line drawn on an era. Peterloo took years, decades, to force change.

So I do think the rioting was part of a historical tradition unique to Manchester and Salford. Please bear with me. But it had absolutely nothing to do with the fine, noble and courageous sacrifices of struggles that have marked these great twin cities. They have been at the forefront of democracy, feminism and vegetarianism - and even the competing radicalisms of free trade, trade unionism and the co-operative movement.

But there has always been something murky under and often on the surface of Manchester life. Gangsterism.

Forget that buffoon David Starkey and his hopeless attempts to understand street culture, the celebration of mob rule, criminality and the gang exploded to the surface on our streets last week. And it wasn't for the first time. What was it that sounded the death knell for Madchester club culture in the 1990s? Gangsters.

This isn't a working class thing either. How many financial scandals have been rooted here? Barlowe Clowes, Lexi, VAT scammers and the wealthy gangsters who live alongside the celebrities and footballers in the Cheshire golden triangle. Gangsters.

This isn't yet another piece of punditry claiming to have the answers, but just a sad and grumpy recognition that we live amidst some horrible people who inspire some very stupid people to be like them.

PS If you want some sensible comment on the riots there's loads out there. I tip my hat in the direction of the following: Martin Bright, Simon Marcus, John Robb, Charlie Brooker, Ed Owen on Daddy Be Good, Harriet Sergeant, Peter Oborne and Polly Toynbee.

They reach different conclusions. They come from different perspectives, some of them are a bit shrill, but that is what is important for everyone who cares to do here. Think and listen. Open your mind, step out of your comfort zones and your echo chambers. Stop this pathetic descent into "he said, she said, yes but" name calling. Try and forge a solution that can save our society from barbarism. All of us.

We've come on holiday by mistake

2011-08-14T19:16:00.001Z

We want the finest wines - kids Withnail tribute

2011-08-14T19:14:00.002Z

Chaos behind the scenes at Blackburn Rovers

2011-08-13T19:13:00.002Z

The customer-facing staff are at the frontline of any business. And at Blackburn Rovers today I spoke to enough of them to see that the organisation is utterly dysfunctional. No-one knows what is going on at the club. There is no leadership or sense of common purpose. Who's fault is that?

Customers in the corporate areas have dropped off; the Clayton Douglas lounge - which is for the shirt sponsor and the match sponsor - wasn't open today. Indeed, the match sponsor was Sportfive the sales agency tasked with selling such deals. I saw one director there today - Bob Coar. There were the executives, sure, but there is no board to host the visiting directors any more. There was no one present from India. For the opening day of the season that is disgraceful. It is a shameful facet of foreign ownership that certain owners lack sufficient interest in something so special to so many people that they don't even go to games. Who's fault is that?

On the pitch the team lost. That is bad enough, but they lost because they were a weakened team. Who's fault is that?

Kean fielded a young midfield player and a rookie at centre back and no holding midfield player. Jamie O'Hara will not dominate another midfield area as easily as he did today. Yes, injuries had a bearing on the options, but a new centre half should have been a priority since the end of last season. A good squad has players in every position and the bench today showed the weakness in the squad. The worst thing I heard today is that despite all the departures there is no money. None from Jones, none from Kalinic. It is all hand to mouth. Who's fault is that?

The answer to all of the above is "Venky's".

But it is also dawning on everyone at the club, and now amongst the supporters that the owners aren't as resourced or as committed as they claimed when the Walker Trust sold it to them. They just buy time with stunts like free pies at Wolves, charity sponsors and renaming the Blackburn End. And if they have got the club in this kind of chaotic mess so quickly and so recklessly, and are so unable to do anything about it, then the ultimate responsibility also has to be with the Walker Trustees who signed over our club to these people.

Hooray - the Premier League kicks off today

2011-08-13T10:11:00.003Z

Right, back from holiday, off to the football today. We haven't bought season tickets this year for reasons I've mentioned elsewhere. Still massively underwhelmed by football as a whole. There is something even more vapid and manipulative about it. But still...

Here are my predictions for the league.

1 Chelsea
2 Manchester United
3 Manchester City
4 Liverpool
5 Arsenal
6 Tottenham
7-16 I have to say I've totally lost interest in doing this already. There is just no excitement in it. Here are the three that I think will go down:
18 Blackburn Rovers
19 Queen's Park Rangers
20 Swansea City

FA Cup: Chelsea
Champions League: Barcelona
Championship: Leicester
League One: Sheffield United
League Two: Crawley Town

Why so pessimistic about Rovers? We've lost three of the most influential players of last season - and three potentially big players for the one to come - Phil Jones, Jermaine Jones and it looks like Chris Samba will go too. I liked Kalinic, he could still be a decent Premier League player, but he's gone too. They are all big holes to plug. Who is there to replace them? Last season's pretty boys - Rochina and Formica - still have to get games under their belts and to learn. There isn't time to do that. Same with this David Goodwillie, the Scottish striker will not make it in time, the gulf in quality is a chasm. It will be Keith Andrews all over again.

There is chronic instability throughout the club, which matters. Sure the chief executive doesn't pull on a shirt and play a game, but the lack of one contributes to Steve Kean's uphill task. He will not be able to attract the game changing players that are needed and he doesn't have the network to do quick fixes.

If any of that is misplaced, offensive, or you think it is disloyal, then I'm sorry. This is one of those issues where I desperately want to be wrong.

Marple in Action

2011-07-31T19:30:00.000Z

The Marple in Action website here is adding new links and lots of tools to help those of us round here who don't want the local collage to sell to a major supermarket chain. What a superb example of community spirit and action. I spoke to a couple of businesses on Saturday who seem quite resigned to the Tescoisation of Marple. It is a chance for the community to up its game. The whole place is going into a period of change - one way or another, it's vital we emerge better and stronger than before.

Pre-season excitement sadly lacking

2011-07-29T20:39:00.003Z

I've been thinking about all the pre-season build ups in the past. All the simple events and happenings that got my juices flowing in anticipation of a season of thrills at Ewood Park.

On one particular occasion it was the unbelievable giddy, headswimming delight of seeing my team in the top flight with hot new signings like Alan Shearer, Stuart Ripley and Wayne Burnett (he was going to be a star, you know). But that was probably a one off. There's certainly none of that this season.

OK, new summer signings can disappoint. But there were times when you thought, 'hey, this new lad could do a job for us' - Speedie, Sutton, Santa Cruz, even Kevin Davies and George Donis. Or Bellamy and Kalinic. But Jerome Anderson's son hasn't set a pulse racing.

It was even the emotional delight of looking forward to taking the young lads to a game and giving them the same build up of excitement that I used to have - first with my nephews, then with my own first son, then as the rest joined the world, sharing the family occasion with them.

During one close season my nephew won a competition to model the smart new kit with some players. We got to hang out with Dunny, Matt Jansen and Duffer. They co-operated with the sponsors, Time, in parading the new kit. It was innocent fun. Something was stirring. Now the players advertise chicken and look like unwilling sops in a humiliating circus.

There has been anticipation of being truly part of a European adventure. Not this time.

There have been comments from the manager that the group of players could do better than 6th, or a semi-final, and add more silverware. Realistic self-improvement. No, now we get delusions and illusions befitting Comical Ali.

There has been the sense that this is my club, that I will stand by this group of players no matter what. That the club might be skint, parts of the ground condemned and the prospects poor. That the team may not be the best, but they are my club and even though we have gone down, I meant it when I stood in tears singing 'we'll support you evermore'. Maybe I've just grown up a bit.

Sometimes in the past it was even the chance to show off some new gear I'd bought or acquired through shrewd swapping - striding onto the Nuttall Street paddock in my Pringle and Fila. No, I'm way past that too.

Sometimes the previous season may have been tough, but the heartfelt efforts of the club to get the fans onside meant the discounts, the marketing, the little touches that relit the dying flame. Not this season.

Sometimes it was because I didn't have much else going on, or it was a release from everything else. No, can't claim that now either.

So, for all of the above I have no inclination to renew our season tickets. I have no plans to organise my life, our family life, around the fixture list. There has been nothing to counter a deep rooted cynicism with football in general and Rovers in particular. Nothing at all.

The anger rises over Marple College sell off

2011-07-27T20:45:00.001Z

So, the Marple Area Committee meeting has never seen anything like it. They moved it to a room that could hold 150, but there were about the same number still outside. In the end, it was taken outside into Memorial Park. The basic council line on the college land sell off, from the officials and the councillors is the same - the site of the Hibbert Lane campus will not be granted planning permission for retail.

There are, however, more questions than answers arising out of all this and people aren't happy at all.

Here are a few to start with.

Why was the MP Andrew Stunell not at the meeting tonight?

When did councillors first learn of this plan for the college to sell off land?

On what basis has "market research" of Marple residents' shopping habits been used to substantiate a business case for a retail development on the site?

What economic impact surveys have been done regarding a retail development on this site?

What conversations have the college held with housebuilders over development of the land for housing and what value has the land for residential development?

What discussions have they held with the local council, or potential partners, over the possibility of leisure developments on the site, including the closure of Marple baths and new sports facilities?

If the plan for retail is against council policy, why has it taken until now for elected officials to RESPOND to questions, let alone make public statements on the issue?

What would change the council's policy on the use of this site? If medium or large retail would be refused, what is small? And what trust can anyone in Stockport have over Tesco's interpretation of this, given their Portwood store is 15 per cent bigger than they had permission for?

And just a thought, which of the Marple councillors are up for election next year? And which of them have served as governors of the college in the recent past? Which of them were privy to meetings at which the land sale was discussed?

Supermarket on Hibbert Lane in Marple? No thanks

2011-07-25T20:58:00.002Z

A huge issue has exploded locally. A local college has opted to sell one of its sites. The fear locally is that this will be to a large supermarket group - Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Waitrose have all been mentioned, but to be fair, it has been difficult to separate rumour from fact. However, there are some tenacious and resourceful people round here. As a result of Freedom of Information requests and persistent calls and letters to councillors, officials and the college, some facts have started to emerge.

The local website has a particularly useful thread, here, which deals with the facts of the issue.

On there, our local councillor, Susan Ingham, chair of the Area Committee, has confirmed to a concerned resident a few facts too.

It is true that the College intend to sell the Hibbert Lane Campus and as an independent commercial organisation they are free to do whatever they believe is in the College’s best interest and the Council has no jurisdiction in that respect. As I understand it they have been in talks with various supermarkets and developers, but nothing has been agreed at this stage.
As far as planning permission goes, the Council Planning department is clear that the land in question is designated as housing. No retail development would be given consent outside the District Centre. The Hibbert Lane campus falls outside the District Centre and therefore any a planning application to develop a retail site is likely to be refused.

Councillor Ingham will be chairing the Area Committe meeting this Wednesday at the Senior Citizens Hall near Marple Library. I expect the numbers attending to be bigger than usual. Our family will be represented.

I have an open mind on many things. Believe you me I've weighed up all the options on this one. Getting a cheap bottle of milk will be much easier for a start. But you have to look at the bigger picture. The local festivals, the local businesses that struggle along, the strong sense of community makes this a different and special place. And there is no way on earth that a big supermarket on Hibbert Lane would be good for Marple. In fact, it would be a disaster. This needs to be resisted all the way.

Can we please show some humanity

2011-07-23T19:46:00.002Z

This sick lunatic killing kids at a youth camp in Norway is just absolutely horrific. It's beyond comprehension. He will claim it was for one reason or another, just as the nutters who blew themselves up on 7/7 in London did. Nothing can justify it. Neither can anyone rushing to pin complicity on any kind of political or religious position. Innocent people are dead. Surely it is enough to mourn them, condemn those responsible and stand in awe at the selfless bravery, once again, of people caught up in this hell on earth.

Wasn't the golf brilliant?

2011-07-18T22:21:00.001Z

Really enjoyed that epic final round of the Open yesterday. Darren Clarke was an inspiration. I was particularly proud of my good pal Mike Finnigan who has been working with Darren and got a special mention in the paper here. The biggest barrier to success has been Darren himself - Finn has taught him a winning mentality - so many of the commentators and observers spotted it.

I spoke to Mike yesterday, the full story is here.

It also proves an old maxim about golf being a game played over six inches - between your ears. Inspirational.

Transmission 001 - The Flaming Lips - guest review by David Casey

2011-07-17T14:39:00.000Z

Jodrell Bank isn't a total stranger to music events - the site has previously played host to a one-off performance from Doves, while Professor Brian Cox's D:REAM 'partied up the world' on the Lovell telescope way back in 1995 - but 'Transmission 001 - Live from Jodrell Bank' is the first time a mini-festival has been held at the Cheshire observatory.

The idea of Transmission is to connect the work of Jodrell Bank with new audiences - attract fans for an evening of music, but allow them to take part in space research workshops and access the new £3.5m visitor centre during the day.

Of course it's also a way of generating extra funds to help pay for the site's running costs, given the shrinking public revenue streams available, and it cashes in on the growing trend for bands to play novel venues.

The Forestry Commission has held music events at Cheshire's Delamere Forest for a number of years now, with Erasure, The Courteeners and Simple Minds on the bill this year, but Transmission's line-up was arguably the more exciting of the two.

The Flaming Lips were the main draw although support acts British Sea Power, OK Go, Wave Pictures and Alice Gold ensured the event attracted a diverse mix of people. It was an inspired choice by the organisers to get Wayne Coyne's Oklahoma psychedelic rockers to head the bill, as songs like 'What Is The Light?' and 'Observer' provided the perfect soundtrack for a gig in the shadow of the Lovell, whose dish also doubled as a huge projection screen.

And whether it's through giant balloons, confetti cannons or fancy-dress costumes, Coyne managed to elicit feelings of joy, positivity and love from the 5,000-strong crowd that is rarely present with other bands. It was hard not to bounce around with child-like glee as you were being showered with confetti, especially during 'Do You Realize?', the big sing-a-long of the night.

The event wasn't without its teething problems - taking more than one-and-a-half hours to exit the site's car park took some of the sheen off the night - but from a music and science-engagement perspective, it was a triumph.

As Coyne said: "To stand hear in the symbolic shadow of this great a achievement, I think this is the best place to be on planet earth right now, tonight, right here." I'm not sure there's many people who attended that would disagree.

Going to jail with James Timpson

2011-07-17T14:26:00.001Z

This blog isn't about work, but I do want to include a link here to a piece I wrote in Insider. I went to visit Forest Bank prison in Salford with James Timpson, the managing director of his family owned shoe repair and key cutting business. It was one of the most unsettling, yet inspirational days I've ever had. It opened my eyes to life inside the prison system and to the extraordinary things that people can do to change broken lives. You can read it here.

Hope and Glory by Stuart Maconie reviewed

2011-07-17T14:03:00.001Z

I haven't actually read all of Stuart Maconie's book on the history of our times. I gave my copy to a visiting American businessman I met last week in the fond hope it will inspire him to promote the North of England to his countrymen.

It's better than his last two, even though it's very similar. The format is more structured, he picks a day each decade and uses that to describe the themes that emerged, weaving a readable and modern social history. I'd just got up to 1977 and the Silver Jubilee and the birth of punk. The days themselves are interesting choices, the birth of TV, the docking of the Windrush, the World Cup final in 1966. The best, I felt, was the choice of the conquest of Everest in the 1950s.

For all that more rigid attempts at structure, anyone who enjoyed Pies and Prejudice would still recognise his penchant for rambling anecdotes and touching tangents.

Abuses of power, justice required

2011-07-17T13:53:00.000Z

These are indeed extraordinary times. The events stemming from the phone hacking scandal continue to amaze. As I write Rebekah Brooks has been arrested. What is there to suggest that James Murdoch won't be next? The other newspapers and media organisations can smell blood. So too can the politicians who bowed and scraped to Murdoch for so long. And even though the public appetite for the story probably isn't as great as the media believe.

Phone hacking isn't difficult. Most people are daft enough not to have changed the pin on their mobile phone. So, by keying in the default codes when the voicemail kicks in, depending on the mobile company, it is so simple a child could do it. That it was done to hack the phone messages of a murdered child is a truly appalling example of the lack of perspective, but it was still bad form when it was a celebrity

It started as a savage verdict on media ethics. The constant crossing of the line of acceptable behaviour - phone hacking, bin dipping, bribing of police - and it has become a major debate over craven politics and abuses of power. The argument over standards shouldn't be allowed to fall by the wayside.

I don't subscribe to the "yes, but" argument. I think when it's used by News International journalists and apologists it is a weak attempt at distraction. But in questioning whether executives at Mirror Group, the Mail, the Guardian and the Telegraph should be answerable to the findings of the Information Commissioners report into the dodgy use of private detectives is a valid one. So too is the introduction into the discussion as to whether the leaking of "hacked" and "stolen" confidential data from MPs expense sheets and Wikileaks auctioning stolen military information is acceptable. You can't have it both ways.

If this debate is being broadened out, then there is another diversion yet to be addressed. That is the abuse of monopoly position, the bullying of the legal regulatory process and the crushing of smaller competitors that undermines a free market. No, not in media, but in retail. The big supermarkets have had their own way for too long too. And if a politician was in search of a just cause that others have feared, then this is it.

My mate #13 Steve Connor

2011-07-12T21:40:00.002Z

There's a quote from Gore Vidal that says "whenever a friend succeeds a little piece of me dies". I feel the opposite. Today I went to see my friend Steve Connor at the ceremony to unveil a portrait of Yuri Gagarin in Manchester Town Hall to commemorate the 50th anniversay of his visit to the city. Steve's pictured here with Harry Lyons the Lord Mayor of Manchester as he's driven the project along.

When I got there Steve was speaking with the backdrop of the Russian imperial flag. Part of him will have been disappointed that it wasn't the hammer and sickle (purely for reasons of historical accuracy, of course), indeed a couple of old "tankies" made that very point. Steve spoke so well, telling the story of how Major Gagarin came to rainy Manchester to meet the workers at Metropolitan Vickers and at the foundry workers union base in Moss Side and how he met Bernard Lovell, the creator of the Jodrell Bank telescope at a reception at the Town Hall.

"He was pretty much mobbed on his arrival by a crowd that included the then ‘Mayor of Stretford’. He then drove through Moss Side to the Union’s HQ, where his car was reported showered with ‘red roses, poppies and carnations’ and, this is my favourite bit, was presented with a specially designed medal that to my eye could have been the early work of Comrade Saville, if he’d been around at the time. It included the slogan ‘Together Moulding a Better World'."

There's some coverage here and here is Steve's blog on the plans for the celebration of the anniversary of the visit today with a flavour of what he spoke about today.

I knew Steve at Manchester University in the 1980s when we both wrote for Mancunion, the student paper, and were both in the Labour Party (he's one of only two people who still call me "comrade"). It was brilliant reacquanting with him again when I came back to the city in 2000 and I've particularly enjoyed seeing his business grow. Creative Concern isn't just a PR company for good causes, it's more of a moral crusade. They burn with passion for clients and bring civic advocacy and real campaigning zeal. It's been hard through the recession, but on the evidence of work they've done for the Manchester Electric Car Company they have grasped the commercial nettle very effectively.

So, to come back to Gore Vidal's silly quote. Honestly, once in a while you look at one of your friends in a confident and happy place and you just glow. Today was one of those days. And here's a better Vidal quote: "Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn." Touche, comrade?

Maple Leaf monument to Canadian air crews

2011-07-11T21:44:00.001Z

Until now there has been no permanent memorial to the Royal Canadian Airforce and their extraordinary contribution to the war effort in the Second World War. As I mentioned here, this has been a work in progress, and me and my Mum were honoured to represent our family at the unveiling of a new monument at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire. My Grandfather Francis Edward O'Hare, my Mum's Dad, died aged just 24, shot down near Duisberg in Germany in April 1943. He was serving as a pilot officer with the Royal Canadian Airforce and based out of Gransden Lodge in Cambridgeshire.

The ceremony was officially hosted by the Duke of Gloucester, who spoke well. But for us the most touching contribution was made by Commodore Kelly Williams, a senior military officer from Canada who is currently serving as the military attache to the UK. He spoke of meeting a war widow and her son, now 67, who never met his father and reunited her with a ring. The full story is here. When we met him later to thank him for his oration he spoke direct words of comfort and support to my Mum that meant so much to her.

I'd never been aware of the National Arboretum either. It is a symbol of the steady and stoic support for the contribution of the armed forces in this country. I've been to Arlington in Washington and to the memorials of Canberra. I've even been to the national monument in Ankara. But wasn't even aware of this place. It seems to have been born from a movement that has genuinely come from the people, to honour fallen heroes. It is a serene and impressive place. The central obelisk and statues form the centrepiece, but much thought has gone into its ambience. As the trees bloom it will be a magnificent haven to reflect and to honour.