SubscribePurgatory is, perhaps fittingly, represented by an old Tory – let’s call him Erny – a breed thankfully extinct in Manchester, where too many people remember Thatcher to allow them any of the ninety-nine (soon to be ninety-six) council seats. And this is version two of this blog. The first linked to Erny, but I’ve changed my mind about that now (as I write it’s archived on Google… so if you’re quick… it won’t be there for long).
I discovered Erny after Mum mentioned his most entertaining newsletter ‘News from the Front’. I suspect this replaces the ‘Hot News’ page which finishes in October 2003, with an event that happened elsewhere, so I’ll skip it. But I’m glad to see that up to that point Erny was no slacker. That September he got an undisclosed number of – rather modestly he simply says ‘many’ – street name plates replaced at £125 each. And in December 2002 he followed up ‘reports of unusual activity at a site’ just outside Purgatory where, ‘council officers [had been] concerned at the use of mechanical diggers.’ Mysteriously there is no further mention of this episode on Erny’s website… I think we should be told.
Now we need not rely on ‘Hot News’ because it’s been replaced with ‘News from the Front’, an excellent way of keeping in touch with Purgatory without having to visit. It’s a bit more chatty than ‘Hot News’, with buildings referred to by their nicknames (in quotes, of course, and only after being properly introduced). And Erny’s delighted to be able to offer free admission to a council scrutiny committee meeting.
And there’s a big debate prompted by trees growing on the disused railway track – should they be cut down? I wonder if I should conduct an online poll here?
