Effects of Recession on the A62

The Guardian has a great gallery of Christopher Thomond's images depicting scenes representing the effect the recession is having along the A62.

View the gallery here.

Drew Foley's Wheel of Rape

It cannot have escaped anyone's attention that the NHS is currently being dismantled by a government we didn't elect. The greatest single invention Britain has ever come up with. Providing universal healthcare for it's people (before you right wing “death to anyone who isn't poor or me” apologists all start, yes I know we fucking pay for it. It's not the point I'm making here. You think when Cameron gets rid of the NHS he's going to stop us paying a chunk of Tax and National Insurance? Get real, fucktards). People say the first duty of government is to protect it's citizens. I think that it's specifically to keep it's citizens healthy, because a healthy citizen can achieve anything. For good or bad.

Now I've noticed a trend over Twitter in the last few weeks. It's that men are to be feared. Not only feared, but actively avoided. Every five minutes a post has cropped up saying that people are being raped. Whilst there are a lot of poor women (and men, which seems to have been glossed over) who are being raped, there is a much worse situation on the horizon. We are all about to be raped.

Guess what. Our rapist isn't going to be a dodgy bloke following us home with a packet of butter in his pocket for lube. He isn't going to be wearing a balaclava as a mask and walking around with a long coat to disguise the fact he is naked underneath. He isn't even going to look at you. Our rapist is wearing a suit, and a tie, and has a serious air of respectability,

So, with that in mind, who is raping the us over the NHS the most?

Welcome to Drew Foley's Wheel of Rape

Spin the Wheel, there are six suspects

1. The Voting System

OK, so this one isn't a person, but it was devised by people and has been long used as an excuse. It still amazes me how few very intelligent people actually understand our voting system. It is not fit for purpose and hasn't been for years. It also fucked us over in a way you wouldn't guess unless it was explained to you.

The main thing to point out is that, no matter how much the media want you to believe it, you are not voting for the leader of a party. This fact seems to get lost, but it's true. I supported the leader debates because they were an opportunity to showcase the main policies of each party, but it's a fact that these may differ at local level. Not that that is ever made clear to you.

You are told your vote counts. Well, it does, you should vote. If you don't, then quite frankly, you have no fucking right to complain about anything that every happens because you didn't do anything about it. You didn't register your opinion. You don't care enough, therefore, you are saying that you don't matter. You are a pawn to be played with by the major political parties who can use you as a beating stick or an oppressed mass, whichever they see fit.

You should register your opinion. However, herein lies the problem. Every constituency votes for it's own MP. There are 650 MP's, meaning that there are 650 different constituencies in Britain. This means that how much your vote matters depends on where you live.

For example, where I live, you could put a red rose on a turd and it would get in, for the simple reason, it's the strongest part that isn't Tory. That is the case in a massive number or inner city wards. I decided that I wasn't so ecstatic about Labour this time round so I voted Liberal Democrat . However, it didn't matter. Labour got in by a landslide where I live. As they generally do in urban areas. On the other side of this, if you are a Tory, I could forgive you for wondering why you aren't in control of 70% of the country, when you look at the electoral map. Most of the country is blue. That's because people who live in the sticks generally vote Tory, for reasons best known to themselves.

The problem is that our electoral system is designed for a two party election. In a two party election, it works. We aren't a two party state. In 2010, there were 50 different parties. That is a lot of different parties in all the different wards. In fact, if you have enough money, you can put yourself up. Martin Bell did it against Neil Hamilton to great success. However, you aren't properly represented. Our system is so daft, that the Lib Dem's seats went down, but their share of the vote went up? How the fuck does that work? Even stupider is this...

The Liberal Democrats polled 23.3% of the popular vote, which is a quarter of the country, but only took 8.77% of the seats in parliament. To put this in context, the popular vote is all the individual votes counted together and divided.

I'm not defending the Lib Dem's. Quite frankly, if they survive the next election with more than 10 MP's I'll be shocked. They conned the fuck out of us. They sold their soul to the blue side. I'm just pointing out that a party that has nearly a quarter of the votes of all the people in the country, has about a twelfth of the seats in parliament.

That's fucking wrong. End of story.

Our electoral system is outdated, outmoded, confusing and presented to us in an Americanised way which is designed to make us believe that we are voting for a specific man, when we're not. You thought you were voting for Cameron, Clegg and Brown.

Well, you weren't.

You were voting for someone in your area who may well have been completely at odds with your views, but you didn't realise, because you were conned.

For the record, I'm really sorry about voting Lib Dem. I actually wrote to the electoral commission to ask for my vote back, even though it didn't matter shit. Fuck, I still felt dirty after what happened.

This voting system needs to change to Proportional Representation. However, it won't. For one very simple reason. To quote Sir Humphrey Appleby,

“No Government is going to change the system that got it into power”

So we're all fucked.

2. Andrew Lansley – Secretary of State for Health

This is an obvious choice. Lansley came up with the bill (well, his name is on it), and he has been trying to sell it to us, he has been Operation Human Shield. to all the hospitals, to take all the shit from the entire country.

Even his Wikipedia photo is sinister, like he's a Bond villain planning to annex Scotland. Mainly because there are no Tory voters there.

We may as well gloss over the donations he has received from private healthcare operators while he was in opposition, and in government.

Actually, lets not.

He took donations from Care UK, who just happen to provide private healthcare for older people to PCT's and councils. No conflict there. I mean, why would he want to farm out NHS services? How about General Healthcare Group? Adrian Fawcett, otherwise known as the COE of GHG only shared a stage with Lansley at an event that GHG sponsored (albeit, indirectly)

Just to confirm, this is a conglomerate that sees the NHS as “one of the largest and most attractive healthcare markets globally”

Let's just take this in. Why the flying fuck is the NHS an attractive healthcare market? Why are people looking at it as an investment opportunity? There is no way that the NHS should be a market. It should be a not for profit organisation. The NHS exists to provide healthcare to the citizens of Britain. It shouldn't exist to provide competition

Andrew Lansley may be a sacrificial lamb. However, he still has a vested interest in the abolition of the NHS. How he sleeps at night is anyone's guess.

3. David Cameron

Cameron is the Prime Minister. Leader of the Conservative party and lead candidate for next political assassination. Seriously, this man is pure evil. He has obviously made a check-list that Thatcher couldn't finish, and he is going through it. His policy record confirms that he simply doesn't care what happens to the country as long as he and his friends are OK. This is obvious in many policies, not limited to road privatisation, bombing Libya (while we were apparently broke), relaunch of the right to buy policy and his crazy idea of antagonising the Falklands.

The fact he lives very close to Rebecca Brooks, who just happened to be the editor of one of the biggest newspapers in the country. Yup, when she wasn't beating up Ross Kemp, she was in charge of the News of the World, (2000 – 2003) and The Sun (2003 – 2009), before finally becoming Chief Executive Officer of News International (2009 – 2011).

Do you know where she is at the time of writing? She is on bail, after being arrested in the phone hacking scandal. Yes, that's right. Our Prime Minister, the man who is representing us on the world stage, is close friends and neighbours with a women who is currently on trial for hacking into innocent people's phones to print news stories

This is the same man who is desperate to to privatise everything we have. He is evil beyond belief. He doesn't want to pay for anything because he doesn't realise how the real world works. He's never had to live in it.

The main question here, is how does he have any integrity left?

4. Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg was the most powerful man in British Politics for a short time.

That is no exaggeration. That time was, in fact, from 6 May 2010 until the 12 May 2010.

There was a hung parliament. There was no overall majority. The Tories had the most seats, and the biggest percentage in parliament. They didn't have enough however, to make a government. They needed another one of the big parties. It wasn't going to be Labour, obviously, and a coalition of all the small parties wouldn't work either, so it could only be the Liberal Democrats.

Let's consider this. In the situation the country was in, the Tories could only get a working majority by going in with the Liberal Democrats. If the Liberal Democrats were to go in with Labour, the seats would be 314 to 306, which is not enough for a strong government, on account of the fact that only 9 people need to rebel and everything is fucked.

Let's look at Clegg though, and the Liberals in general. The liberals lean to the left. There is no doubt about this. They always have and always will. Clegg leans to the left. They don't go for everything Labour go for, but they do lean to the left. So why did they jump into bed and suck the right wing cock? Swallowing all that right wing policy. They are swallowing the cum, thinking that they are in power because they're sat on the government side.

The reason is this. Nick Clegg didn't think of the country He thought of himself, and his party. On the face of it, he had no choice. The fact of the matter is that the Liberal Democrats are finished whatever happens. In a way, he had no choice. So he went with the Tories in the hope that they, as the Liberal Democrats, could temper the policies of the Tory Party.

No chance. Not only have the Tories sent their smear masters against all the Lib Dem's in power, they have got nearly everything through. Basically, Clegg has rolled over. He's being tickled on the belly. Meanwhile. Cameron, is fucking us over. Vince Cable is the only man who has stood up to anyone.

The Tories played the Lib Dem's like the political masters the Tories are. Next election, the Tories are planning to all but wipe out the Lib Dem's by changing the boundaries.

I'm aware that he couldn't have gone with Labour. A majority of 8 isn't enough.

What Nick Clegg should have done is forced another election. Under our ridiculous system, he would have been entitled to do it. He didn't do it because he would have brought the destruction of his party forward 5 years.

So Clegg has won a Pyrrhic victory. He brought power to his party, at the expense of having it with the Tories, and Cameron has fucked him over. Nick Clegg will be going to bed every night feeling the bleeding from his arse. He knows how much he was fucked and if he has any humility, he will shoot himself in the face in front of Parliament.

I know he won't, but that's not the point.

5. The British Voter

The British worker, fundamentally lazy, wants something for nothing.

“This is worse than Afghanistan” shouted one women in Didsbury. She shouted this after half past nine whilst she was in a large queue still to vote She ended up not voting.

The average British voter, can be a parasite on society.

29,650,011 people voted in the 2010 election. This is out of a total of 45,844,691. That's 65% of the potential electorate. Are you seriously telling me that only 65% of the electorate would turn out if they knew that their public services were going to be sold off to the lowest bidder? The simple fact is, that they wouldn't. Some polls put support of a rethink of the NHS bill at 85.2%.

I'm aware that the British public is full of disenfranchised voters, thinking that their vote won't make a difference. You know what, maybe it's for the first time ever, but next time round. MY FUCKING GOD IT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Now, this government has passed a law which means that they can be in power for five years, Cameron has basically put himself in charge for long enough to line is good friends pockets.

Maybe if the British voter knew that they were being led back to the 1980's. Maybe if they knew they were being fucked every day of their life, they might vote. However, our government wants to keep them stupid.

The sad thing is, that many people will still think that their vote won't matter,

We're going to try. Jesus Christ we're going to try. We need to push to get this cancer out.

6. Tony Blair

I won't deny. Tony Blair kicked this off. Apparently, he was a socialist at one point. A direct enemy of Anne Widdecombe. Tony Blair was great for the country in 1997 (even though he picked the wrong band). The fact that National Health Service don't appear on any achievements of his explain his attitude towards the NHS. He was a Labour Prime Minister, and he didn't give a shit.

Who the fuck are we supposed to trust?

You know what the biggest problem with the NHS is?

It's simple. The biggest problem is the private sector.

People sought to bring Private Sector ethics into the NHS. Now, the top of the NHS is filled with people who earn salaries in massive excess of the published highest wage. According to NHS employers, the highest wage you can receive is £97,478. Derek Smith, of Dorset County Hospital, earned £387,220 for the 141 days work in 2010 to 2011. This equates to £1,002,378.01 a year. Are you telling me that no other NHS trusts are employing people at such daft salaries?

The argument is that you can only attract the best people if you pay the best wages. Maybe that's true, but in this case, he was an interim. To take a typical example, a Nurse applying for a job at  Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust (sic) can expect a starting wage of £25,528.

So, what we're saying here is that a head of a hospital can earn the equivalent of 35.4 nurses?. While I imagine this is a generally isolated case, I refuse to believe that it is on it's own.

We need to rid the NHS of the private sector. The simple fact is that the NHS should be a not for profit company. We pay for it to provide healthcare for everybody. We are happy to pay in for years, in the knowledge that one day, when we need it, it will be there for us. Generally speaking, the United Kingdom is an country that is happy to pay to do this.

The NHS has people at the top who want to rape the NHS of all of it's money. Soon, we'll be paying these motherfuckers to rape us. Better start saving now. For me, diabetes is just around the corner.

STOCKPORT!

MMU's (FREE!) MANCHESTER TIME MACHINE APP - 20th Century Procession of the iPhone Ghosts

A little over 60 years after the Computer was allegedly invented here in the form of 'the Baby', most of us now carry around something profoundly more powerful - shallower than a fag packet but with a similar sized Perimeter. Key to this Pandora's Box's myriad capabilities are Apps. Those not endemic to any given device are predominantly pointless, and this one is barely any different depending on your perspective. While nicely put together, and seemingly free of the bugs that louse-up most others, the Manchester Time Machine app is little more than a glorified collection of looping snippets of History to haunt your pocket. But as far as apps go, that's no bad thing. While the Map Function gives the impression that you'll be able to summon-up archive footage of your immediate vicinity, it is in fact largely redundant unless you happen to be on our City's most often-trod streets. In spite of this, this free mini archive of 77 clips spanning from 1911 to 1974 is likely to provide you with more profound hours than catapulting cartoon birds.

Of particular interest: A luminescent tram, careering through the night like the glowing of so many lost souls through a V-Day crowd in Albert Square.

A Bobby giving directions in front of a crazily-laden horse-drawn wagon, towering almost as high as a nearby tram.

The impeccable looking 1960s Piccadilly Gardens, when it was actually a Garden.

The old Orange & White SELNEC buses in St Peter's Square. 

 

 

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.Requires iOS 4.2 or later

Download the FREE app here

Manchester Histories Festival 2012: Fanzine Event

 

Taking place on Saturday 3rd March at 4pm at Manchester Town Hall, Manchester District Music Archive, in association with Manchester Histories Festival, will be hosting a panel discussing the history and legacy of Manchester’s alternative music publications. The discussion will be chaired by Dave (‘Debris’) Haslam. On the panel will be Mike Don from ‘Mole Express’ (legendary early 1970s local underground paper), plus Liz Naylor (of post-punk ‘City Fun’ fame), Bob Dickinson (a contributor to the likes of ‘New Manchester Review’, and ‘City Fun’), and Dan Russell (from the contemporary fanzine ‘Things Happen’). 

The panelists will:

 -  recount tales of Manchester’s music scene

 -  celebrate fanzines and analyse their relationship to the music scene, to the political underground, and to other independent and/or marginalised cultural activity in past eras

 -  discuss the significance of fanzines and other self-published/alternative publications in an era of blogs, digital technology and social media

The panel event is free admission. But attendance should be confirmed by registering here:

http://fanzinespanel.eventbrite.co.uk/

There may be some unregistered availability on the day but this can’t be guaranteed.

http://www.manchesterhistoriesfestival.org.uk/ 

 

Via Manchester District Music Archive

Fanclub Flyers : Stone Love, The Phoenix 1999

Fanclub Flyers : Fridays at South 1998

Fanclub Flyers : Thursdays at 5th Avenue 1998

Fanclub Flyers : Tuesdays at 42nd Street 1998

Fanclub Flyers : Thursdays at Jilly's RockWorld 1998

Riot Hit Gig : R. Stevie Moore, Manchester 2011

R. STEVIE MOORE : THE CASTLE, OLDHAM STREET, MANCHESTER, WEDNESDAY AUGUST 10th 2011

The gig of the century, that never transpired, through a riot-hit Mancunian mist.

Spreading the good word in dirty-earnest.

If the theory of Parallel Universes has any validity, I can guarantee you, you’re in the wrong one. In a certain groove of the musical Multiverse, R. Stevie Moore is a name as familiar to your echo-self as any of The Beatles, only in that reality, these Beatles-of-a-lesser-John performed in obscurity, before calling it quits. Luckily, there exists in our reality the stubborn endeavours of a Bona Fide Genius, who for some reason missed the fame train. Or rather, it missed him. 

The Beatles analogy is maddeningly valid, and R. Stevie Moore has written more songs of optimum quality than had all four been as prolific as an amphetamine-addled Daniel Johnston in the 1980s, for double the decade they dominated. Like Johnston, Moore is regarded as an Outsider Musician, but for no other reason than he has predominantly home-recorded his material, and is dizzyingly prodigious. Moore’s mental state is not in question, though after nearly 40 years on the periphery I’m not sure how. 

His father Bob Moore was a respected musician in his own right, as a bass player most commonly associated with Elvis Presley & Roy Orbison - but also with Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr, Andy Williams and Quincy Jones to name but a few. Such a talent-gasm must have sent shockwaves reverberating through Bob’s seminal vesicles considering R. Stevie rivals them all.

From the moment I heard ‘Melbourne’, I knew I had found what I was ultimately looking-for.

Little did I know how completely nut-punched I would be with every subsequent song I heard. Every fucking song I heard on ‘Phonography’ sounded like a classic from a parallel universe. ‘I’ve Begun to Fall in Love’ is just scrotum-shrinkingly good. Devastatingly incredible.

Like the prequel to ‘Caroline, No’ by Brian Wilson, (via ‘Don’t Talk, Put Your Head On My Shoulder’ maybe), it is so innocent, so beautiful. so DOOMED. I can’t help but contort my face with every chord-change to represent the particular feeling it evokes, as it meanders so unexpectedly into each incongruous, but perfect chord. Such a weird uncertainty… his voice seems to be so defiant, and sure of how righteous his love is for Carolynn, as it fights against the lugubrious, mournful-sounding chords, that seem to simultaneously echo, and negate the feelings that formed lyrics.

Shortly after discovering his music I embarked upon a flight. It had been a while since I’d done so. It’s not natural, and anyone in their right mind would have to get their mental doormen in-place to stave-off the panicky disaster-bastards from bleeding-in, hooting and gnawing at the console, their shit-filled pants spilling out undetected among the stench of the apocalyptic in-flight meals. My particular mental-employees would lullabye his songs through my mind, and I found I was afraid to die only because, at that point - I had just three of his albums.

The feeling I was enveloped-by, in the midst of discovering his music, was nothing less than love itself. My girlfriend caught us. One day while puttin’ up the groceries, she turned around to see a most peculiar look on my face. The expression spoke of a man who has indulged in pocket-Billiards to such an extent, that his face betrays his secret tournament to the watching world. I was so enraptured by the choice of chord change on ‘What’s The Point?!!’, she thought I’d friction-singed my intimates.

So selfish am I, that upon discovering music that I so abruptly crumble-to, my instinct is to keep it to myself. But in this case it became impossible. That selfish desire fell-away the more blank faces I encountered when spreading the word. If you stumbled across a cure for cancer, could you keep it to yourself?

R. Stevie Moore might not cure cancer (at least, he’s not been widely regarded-enough yet to be put to the scientific test, or exposed to a large enough demographic), but if you had the misfortune to contract-it having been lucky enough to have discovered him – you’ve had a good run.

R. Stevie Moore has written more than enough music to last you a lifetime, there’s just something about it that sets my soul aglow. 

During an evangelical bout of fevered letter writing in 2009 which included the director of ‘The Devil & Daniel Johnston’ Jeff Feuerzeig, ex Public Image Ltd Bassist Paul Jones, and BBC commissioning editors and their minions, I spoke to Half Japanese’s Jad Fair, who theorised that R. Stevie’s relative anonymity was down, in part, to a reluctance to play live.

"I think part of the reason he isn’t better known is that he hardly ever plays out. I did 3 shows this year on the same bill with him and he sounded superfine.”

                                                                                    Jad Fair, Half Japanese

Well, now he is, on Wednesday he plays Manchester for the first time, and it’s your chance to play a part in a long overdue and deserved ascent into recognition. You’ll either come and be enraptured, or come and be able to say that you were there. Either way, it’s definitely not something you want to miss.

His forever-indebted Mooreon,

Chester Whelks

Retrospective : Placebo, Manchester Academy 1998

PLACEBO with ULTRASOUND, MANCHESTER ACADEMY, OCTOBER 18th 1998

1998 was the gig-going year of my youth - I attended many gigs before and after this year, but 1998 was the year when I truly felt like I'd gained my post-school, young-adult status and freedom.
I had a small amount of income from my part-time job working at Afflecks Palace, and still living at home meant I could spend the cash any way I so desired, which mostly meant attending 2-3 gigs a week.
When I picked-up an Academy flyer during one of my shifts at Afflecks, and saw Placebo were coming to Manchester, I elatedly ran to a phone box to call my then-best friend, and offered to pay for her ticket in advance - this was a show I thought would sell out almost straight away.

You see, for us indie kids who gained our seminal self-defined musical education via the twangy guitars riffs and jolly-holiday sentiments of Brit Pop, Placebo were like a heart-jumping, body-seizing last gasp of fresh air when all was starting to feel musically stifled and suffocating.
Placebo were cool. We were just that bit too young to really appreciate Nirvana and the rough-and-tumble of Grunge, with all it's heavy guitars and politics. However, with Placebo, we had our own opportunity to really rock-out and a reason to wear eye liner, a chance for indie kids to dip their toes in the edgy and unknown world of heavy indie rock, which was sprinkled with hints of Goth, Metal and Grunge. Placebo were exciting.

They also spoke a language which had laid dormant since the age of Grunge; the voice of the disgruntled, unappreciated outsiders to mainstream culture. The Gothy S&M front of Brian Molko, along with his androgynous and svelte silhouette and his offbeat lyricism gave the "townies" and conservative types something to gripe about and, quite ignorantly, fear.
Other than the twee and tongue-in-cheek statements made by Jarvis Cocker in songs like "Mis-Shapes"

You could end up with a smack in the mouth, just for standing out

there really wasn't anyone around fighting the corner for those of us on the side-lines in the popularity game any more.
Then came Placebo. "Teenage Angst", "Nancy Boy", "Without You I'm Nothing" and "You Don't Care About Us" screamed at us from a void that was waiting to be filled.

When I arrived at the Academy I sensed the euphoric anticipation in the air, it was intoxicating. I was thrilled to find that prog-rocking, alt-indie outfit Ultrasound had been brought in as support to Placebo, and I knew this was going to be an important gig experience.
However, I didn't realise why this gig would be a cornerstone in my social and musical life until Ultrasound came to the stage.

It's no secret that "Tiny", lead singer of Ultrasound, possibly has the most ironic stage-name in music history. He is, of course, really not tiny at all, and in fact quite large, in regards to the BMI spectrum.
As far as I was aware, he was quite rightly proud of his large stature, and this being just before dawn of the 21st century, he made no qualms in supporting the other culture "outsiders" like himself.

Most notably, Tiny was employed by kitsch working class-champion and entrepreneur Wayne Hemingway, to strut his topless, ample torso down the Catwalk with "Unique" emblazoned across his midriff in red lipstick. Frankly, he didn't seem to give a shit, and nor did I, I appreciated his forth-right stance on self expression.
Ultrasound's most significant release was "Stay Young" - tribal drums, swooping and glazed Neil Young-esque guitars. Fantastic lyrics about urging the young not to relinquish their youth in pursuit of unknown pleasures. Then the spine-tingling, operatic vocals of Vanessa Best to top it all off... it still remains one of the most unappreciated tracks to be released in the 1990's.

In my mind, this Placebo gig was a hive of the unappreciated. I naively thought that we, the audience, were all there in a kind of musical-stronghold, heralding the concept of individualism and the right to exist in whatever form you so desired, as long as you didn't harm anyone else in the process.

It turned out I was wrong, oh so very wrong.

Ultrasound arrived on stage and burst straight into the first song of their set. When they finished, they were met with a shoddy round of applause, and then, a barrage of insults.

"WHO ATE ALL THE PIES?!"

"GET OFF THE STAGE YOU FAT BASTARD!!!"

Groups of the audience chanted together, laughing, booing. My soul took a stage dive.

What happened to this "Hey we're all in this 'being on the outside' together" ethos I thought we were all here to champion? Around me I heard sneering comments about Tiny's waistline, churlish cackles about him being too fat to be on the stage.

I was dumbstruck. I came to realise that these "alternative" folks were nothing but a bunch of judgmental, cool-kids who'd come to see the freak in leather sing about lube, ass and cross-dressing. They'd somehow got the memo that Placebo were the kind of music you should listen to if you want to piss off mummy and daddy, and that was the only substance to their attendance.

Tiny's facial expression dropped slightly once the insults started, from eager excitement, to crestfallen acquiescence of the crowds' disapproval of his apparently problematic physique.
My heart dropped along with his features, these aren't my people, I am ashamed of these cultural interlopers.

In a brief break betwixt the heckling, I emphatically screeched out an opposing "I LOVE YOU ULTRASOUND! I LOVE YOU TINY!", my 16 year old girl-voice lost in the crowd.

Ultrasound boldly continued on with their set, but not without a taint of rejection and sadness to their performance. Vanessa Best could be seen stage-right, occasionally interjecting her bass-lines with a snarling exchange of "WANKER" with various crowd members.
The crowds continued to disrupt the Ultrasound show, until Molko made an impromptu appearance mid-set, when he promised the crowd they would be going home without seeing Placebo perform if they refused to show a little goddamn respect.

I knew times were a-changing, it was undoubtedly the first time I realised that being "unique" was often actually nothing more than a badge to be worn by those whom didn't have anything noteworthy about themselves otherwise.
You can dye your hair black, wear black nail polish, tattoo and pierce yourself from head to toe, but when you start deriding a man for being too fat to sing on stage, there's some serious hypocrisy that needs resolving.

After Ultrasound vacated the stage, Placebo followed-up soon after, with Brian Molko slinking his way under the spot light, a glint of indignation in his eyes as he surveyed the whistling and screaming crowd.
Two songs in to the set, he moved close to the microphone and said quite sternly "THIS SONG'S FOR ULTRASOUND. IT'S HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT YOU" at which point, the band erupted in to "You Don't Care About Us", full-throttle.

You Don't Care About Us by Kittysaros

It was Placebo's FUCK YOU to the paying audience, without putting too many noses out of joint.

I sensed a vague nuance of embarrassment in the audience once Molko made his musical statement on behalf of Ultrasound. It seemed as though those that had previously been jeering Tiny, were somehow surprised to find that Brian wasn't exactly on their side.

I put my anger and disappointment in my peers straight back in to the event, and allowed myself to be thrown about the writhing crowd and mosh-pit of the Academy. I scream-sang so loud, I lost my voice for 2 days afterwards. I left the gig sweaty, tired, musically-fulfilled, but with a small dent in my heart that had been otherwise quite pristine beforehand.

Think I'll leave it all behind, save this bleeding heart of mine.
It's a matter of trust.
Because.
You don't care about us.
It's your age, It's my rage.

"A Scally-Glastonbury" : The Manchester 'Riots'

TUESDAY               AUGUST                 9th                   2011                      15:38

There's an ominous* hum emanating from the imperceptible vibration of the nervous girls that last night piped-up thinking they could see smoke plumes erupting in Gorton from their City Centre flats as London burned, when cockeyed racist potato Nick Griffin aped mate Jeremy Clarkson by Twitter-predicting Salford was scheduling a descent into Hell. The famously endearing, absurd-sounding Manchester Evening News sandwich board posters are bizarrely generic this afternoon.

Where ordinarily they would read something like:

TRAFFORD MAN'S

BANANA PLANS

HIT SKIDS

Or

LEVENSHULME

PENSIONER'S

HEDGEHOG

ADVENTURES

They today matter-of-factly say:

2 FOR 1

AT

CHILL FACTOR-E

and

FANTASTIC

10 PAGE

SPORTS

PULL-OUT

Like some sort of offering to the looming Manchester Scally-Kraken.

Mancunian Twitter users are rocking in the corner, chanting the mantra that 'it won't happen here', or quoting Tony Wilson’s edict that ‘we do things differently’.

Mark Duggan did NOT fire at police. "If he did have a gun – which I don't know – Mark would run. Mark is a runner. He would run rather than firing and that's coming from the bottom of my heart" say his family who are understandably really upset and maybe a bit biased. Bringing to mind the kind of time a gyppo-kid drives his hotwired joyride into a motorway tunnel wall because he can't see over the steering wheel, and his family say he was 'no Angel' but had a heart of gold (cue slow-zoom into image of kid frowning over his shoulder in some rain slicked November Car Park with flames behind him and a tyre-smoke Halo crowning his slowly grinning face.)

But none of this matters. None among the bikeriding Nike Ninjas swarming on the City Centre know who the fuck Mark Duggan was - or his best friend, 23-year-old rapper Kelvin Easton, known as 'Smegz', for that matter, who died a similarly ignominious death being stabbed by a Champagne bottle in a Club earlier this year - they've just been bombarded with images of their scum-buzzard southern brothers helping themselves to their blackened-heart's desire and have decided they fancy a bit of that.

When I was in my first year of High School, I remember pathetically attempting to remove the swoosh from some expired Nike's in order to lash them onto the pair of unbranded 'market-movers' my Mum had procured me for PE, so I could survive High School.

On a Market Street corner, sovereign-ringed fingers cradle a virulent knacker-sack in tracky pants, while the other hand's thumb flicks the mounting ash off the end of a B&H.

It's always been hard explaining irony to a scally. Even when they're calling YOU a tramp while trying to take your money or stuff.

"Drop us a dollar, Yo?".

Grafts

They aspire to that skewed view of the American dream, leap-frogging work in pursuance of the wealth society denies. Stood on a train platform after the riots, a friend of mine said he overheard some scallies discussing the ‘riots’ and referred to the various acts of scavengery as ‘graft’.

The night of my 18th Birthday, we're sitting in the corner of the football field of my old High School smoking weed at 11pm when three figures gradually materialise through the blackness. Two years earlier in the alley that ran behind us, a couple of my school friends had been pummeled onto crutches passing a gang of scallies (then ‘Townies’), the hereditary enemy of us ‘Moshers’. After an animosity stand-off, we all relax and begin "chatting bare maca" apparently. Their leader reveals an admiration for Pink Floyd, and espouses a belief that we cultural sub-divisions are basically all the same - just going about it in different ways. After about an hour’s good natured maca-chatting, one of his companions slips into an unguarded-account of how his cousin suffered the fairly unprecedented misfortune of an inguinal hernia at just 8 years old. In his limited physiological knowledge, he misinterpreted the ruptured stomach-muscle’s protrudence as an ascended testicle, and when talk turned to how he’d given it a curious squeeze - all hell broke loose.

Leader leaps to his feet and punches testicle-toucher, sat cross-legged, backwards into grass. Testicle-toucher does all he can to stand before getting kicked, trainer full in his face, a dew-soaked rubber sole squeaking off his teeth sending the amateur abdominal examiner backwards into black, while his leader anticipates and follows his trajectory, landing a few more merciless kicks thudding a hollow ‘THWOMP’ into his ribcage and a final sole-imprinting stomp onto his once-capped head.

Leader turns around and sits back down with us, seeming slightly embarrassed, and holds up his hands while looking down in his lap. Leader apologises, saying:

“I’m sorry about that…

I’m not a violent man.”

–      causing uproarious laughter: half of us genuinely driven into fits, the other sickened beyond THC appeasing.

He was the nicest scally I ever met.

Words come through all fluhmplubbled 100 yards away as a defiant whimper limps through profusely bleeding teeth…or at least the spaces where they used to be. Leader immediately drops his skins and legs it after defiant punch-bag, sending him fleeing completely.

The demographic of Negative Alchemists: those who manage to maketh Gold the most scrubberish-looking substance on earth. They’re the ground-up chum of the upperclass. They’re Jonesing for your sports goods, athletically debasing their incongruously resilient, fertile bodies, and breaking all the rules no one bothered to set out for them. They're your bedrock, and you need them to stand upon to keep your head above the crud.

Look at the stores that were looted (NOT the stores that were damaged - in most cases they just saw glass and smashed it) no one was looting Grant Morrison's 'The Invisibles' from ‘Travelling Man’.

What happens in X Factor’s absence

And fuck Liam Gallagher's ‘Pretty Green’ - that sort of pandering to white trash aspiration is only slightly evolved from what motivated the looters.

It's undeniable there was a valid flashpoint, and an equal and opposite reaction, but everything that rippled northward was opportunistic Commercial rape.

Millionaire ex-pat Hollywood-ponce Russell Brand looked-on from Beverley Hills, then wrote a stirring account of a time he used to exorcise his Middle Class guilt by getting involved in protests, squaring up to his Riot-Geared peers.

Their power was illusory. They convened on Cities just as they knew everyone else was leaving, knowing there was zero chance of succeeding with the general populace around lest they found themselves on the receiving end of a bloody good ear-clipping. They would have been totally outnumbered. A clusterfuck for the Police, and a social and moral hierarchical bukkake for the average man, who would no doubt have fought back. It comes down to freewill. There's no Devil to punish you at the end of it. If you so desire you can take the bag off a bleeding geek’s back, but heaven or not we all intrinsically know it isn’t necessarily fucking ‘soul’ to do so. It's up to us whether we adhere to what we have universally decided to be right and best for everyone, meaning 'fuck-with not, lest ye be fucked-with'.

Clearly these kids have been brought up with the greedy creed: 'Do unto others, before they do unto you'.

While hand-wringing social commentators seek a measured explanation, the Ghosts of the Peterloo dead watch these gluttonous opportunists run amok.

Its important we apportion our disdain some free-reign, otherwise how else are we going to be motivated to change the cause of it?

*= Point at which I lost my target audience.

Sharston Baths

Many years ago, a looming great piece of Modernist architecture cast shadow over the speeding cars of the Sharston section of the M56.

The Sharston Baths, constructed in 1959 (originally known as the Wythenshawe Baths, before the creation of the Forum) were at the epicentre of every Wythenshawe child's life for many years, until they were sadly demolished in the mid-nineties.

The designs for the baths were created in 1955 by City Architect L. C. Howitt (Leonard Cecil Howitt), whom conceived some of Manchester's most notable pieces of Modernist architecture, including the much-celebrated Toast Rack, Manchester Crown Court and Blackley Crematorium; a building I had the mournful duty of visiting as a teen when a friend's father passed-away.

I believe that the architecture of Sharston Baths has been over-looked for many reasons, and if it still stood today would be surely upgraded to a listed building.
Visiting Shartson Baths, passing by the Toast Rack on the bus, making a sad entrance to Blackley Crematorium as teenager - something really shook my ideas of what civic buildings should look like, and this is credit to L. C. Howitt as an architect.

The ominous concrete bones and glassy skin of the architecture stood clear of its surrounding fellow denizen structures; Dutch-roof council houses of the 1930s, the conventionality of Victorian-built "The Sharston" public house.

Models of Sharston Baths proposed design.

This grey monolith did nothing with its presence to deter the young from enjoying almost daily swim-trips, Sharston Baths was at the heart of a community that would otherwise be deprived of such leisure activities.

From the day of its creation, until its untimely demise, the pool offered many out-of-the-ordinary spectacles for the locals to enjoy, including a 1969 visit from what the children were lead to believe was "Flipper" - the spectacular, crime-fighting Dolphin.
The Dolphin in question actually turned-out to be a generic porpoise, given the name of Flipper to bring in the crowds - however, I'm quite certain that the exotic nature of the event would have been enough to generate a stir in the community without the Hollywood spangled Flipper moniker on the posters.

As a side-note, the original Flipper (real name Mitzi) never left her

watery home of the US, and apparently died of a heart attack in 1972.

Sharton Baths was on the precipice of boasting an Olympic Size pool, if it were not for a tile-miscalculation - the concrete frame of the pool had been designed exactly 50 meters in length. However, once tiling of the inside commenced, it slowly became clear that the pool's length was decreasing, leaving it just that bit too short to qualify as "Olympic-size".
I'm sure this caused much confusion and embarrassment for the contractors and council at the time, however, the patrons were patently oblivious.

Pale, skinny prepubescent children would throw themselves with reckless abandon from aloft the 12 foot diving boards, in to the great depths of the deep end. There was austere joy in consuming watery chicken consommé in too-hot-to-hold plastic cups from the vending machines, inhaling the insipid chickeny aroma to counteract the thick stench of council-commissioned chlorine in the air.

Mid-1960s Certificate

I received my first swimming certificate from Sharston Baths (my 5 meters) as did my mother, and thousands of others from all different generations of Wythenshawe.

This is my ode to Sharston Baths (1959 - mid nineteen nineties).

All photos are from the Manchester Local Image Collection.

A huge thank you to The Manchester Modernist Society for their additional information.