Over on my public relations blog, I’m supporting a campaign to keep Freedom of Information requests free. The Freedom of Information Act is one of the government’s most important achievements; placing an obligation on the public sector to share information with the rest of us. Over time, it’s sure to play a key role in combating the culture of secrecy that engulfs government as procedures are forced to change following the vigorous application of the law… that’s the theory anyway.
‘Son when you grow up, will you be the saviour of the broken / The beaten and the damned?’/ ‘Will you defeat them (your demons), and all the non-believers, the plans that they have made?’ – ‘Welcome to the Black Parade,’ My Chemical Romance
Goodness. What a lot pressure to put on a young boy. Saviour. Now that’s a big ask! I’m glad my father never spoke to me this way… think of the pressure. But look at it from dad’s point-of-view: he was ‘the chair, for all the broken’. No wonder he wished for a son who would grow up to relieve that strain.
Yet this is number one, so plenty out there must identify with the sentiment and that makes me wonder what goes on behind closed doors. My parents never did sit me down for a discussion on the birds and the bees, something I’m sure would have been rather embarrassing all round. Rather sensibly they left it to school classroom and playground. However, popular music is full of parental sages.
It’s doubtful that the Supremes ever had to resort to Cosmo. But although Michael Jackson’s mother was full of relationship advice, it didn’t stop him getting into a dispute with Billy Jean. Then there’s the poor soul who’s rather scary mother tried to put him off girls with dire warnings of Blues in the Night. But saviour… that’s a big ask.
Brothers of the Head, a faux documentary of the (inevitably tragic) lives of conjoined twin brothers effectively sold as a 1970s rock freak show, never quite hits the mark. It too easily falls back on talking heads. A proper biopic would have been so much harder, so much more rewarding… perhaps. An indifferent 4 out of 10. Directors:Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe……Starring:Harry Treadaway…… Luke Treadaway Clerks 2……The History Boys
‘Many Arabs have money but are at a loss as to what to do with it. I persuaded one or two to look at property and bring their money to the UK.’ – Mohammed Ishtiaq, MI7
Somewhere near where this photo was taken – perhaps even in this photo – is an MI7 development. There’s a much bigger one in Bradford. Should you be excited? Probably not.
MI7 is not a brand new branch of the security services, nor is the quote above a grand insight from an intelligence report. It’s Mohammed Afaq’s brother, Ishtiaq, talking to Property Week about investors like Mohammed Ikhlaq, from the United Arab Emirates.
So this is not the northern English outpost of a new branch of the security services. It’s just a jokey name and MI7 Developments builds flats and stuff with Mohammed Ikhlaq’s money. That’s rather disappointing to those of us who like to see prestige organisations attracted to Greater Manchester.
I just hope that, given Mohammed Afaq’s performance at 103 Cundiff Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Ishtiaq doesn’t ask his brother (who is sole director of Evo Concepts the chartered architects with whom MI7 shares offices) to get involved with the erection of any fencing. (Note of clarification: Mohammed Afaq is keen to point out that while he may be described as Evo Concepts controlling mind, Evo Concepts had nothing whatsoever to do with the fence erected at 103 Cundiff Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy. This rather shoddy fence, which was erected without the appropriate planning permission after a public nuisance order was served by the city council, remains his personal responsibility. Should you commission Evo Concepts on a project that includes the erection of fencing, you may wish to request that another architect works on this aspect of the scheme. You may also wish to consider the views of Greater Manchester Police on Evo Concepts’ design for 103 Cundiff Road.) Related stuff:Evo Concepts’ Mohammed Afaq: anti-social neighbour……Evo Architects’ Mohammed Afaq & anti-social behaviour……Anti-social property owners: the Hale Barns connection
AD: Buy Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell right now! Oh dear. When I was at school there was a moment (perhaps more than a moment, to be honest) when Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell was on every list of must have albums. Even I had a copy on cassette (CDs had yet to make it; I was rejecting vinyl for the new technology).
In retrospect it was overblown, cringing theatre and it’s amazing we all fell for it. Luckily, I’d forgotten about Bat Out of Hell 2.
We certainly don’t need a third volume; I’d rather see a Phil Collins revival. This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).
Labour MP Sion Simon’s spoof on David Cameron’s venture into cyberspace (through which he appears determined to cultivate a nice-but-dim image) may win the headlines, but it is embarrassingly bad. It shows that 640-odd MPs is about 440 too many: there really is very little work for backbenchers to do. On the other hand, this video from Bloggerheads hits the mark. Bloggerheads lost its satirical edge about the same time the failed Backing Blair campaign fibbed about technical sabotage and went all anti-Trade Union. But this is a return to form… a simple joke well executed.
The BBC’s new Robin Hood may have grabbed the viewers on Saturday, but if there’s any justice he’ll be giving them back to poor ITV soon.
This Robin Hood fell into the trap of working too hard to introduce characters we kind of know anyway, rather than give them a chance to fill out on screen over a couple of episodes. And it’s so cartoonish as a result. Something not helped by mediocre casting: Robin himself was more charismatic as a hoodie. ‘Keith Allen can do the sheriff in his sleep,’ thought someone. Indeed he can and indeed he does. His performance at the kids’ hanging was identical to the one he gave at the Manchester Passion, but he can turn in stunning performances when pushed in stuff like Bodies. How very, very safe.
Meanwhile, last week’s one-off Cracker on ITV was a work that, to borrow a nice phrase from elsewhere, proceeded to ‘stomp around on top of – rather than capture – the zeitgeist’. We were invited to spend half the time comparing and contrasting ever so clumsily inserted footage from the war in Iraq and troubles in Northern Ireland. And the references to Manchester having reinvented itself were slotted in just as sloppily. And those kids may have being playing video games in the bedroom, but I reckon they’d still have noticed the army of police officers surrounding the house heard all that gunfire and done more than smile sweetly when stranger Robbie Coltrane barged in the room to check on the little darlings. It served as a reminder that there was a time when ITV produced stuff over than soap; a time we will probably never see again.
Compare and contrast how the unbeatable Sopranos deals with a mob leader who wishes his contemporaries could accept a gay captain, while coping with his daughter’s growing social awareness and his elderly uncle’s dementia. That’s a zeitgeist capturing drama. Update: As predicted above: Viewers desert Robin Hood
The pretence that choosing to wear a veil is a fashion statement – an argument that conjures images of a Muslim girl asking a friend ‘does my head look small in this?’ – does the veil’s defenders no favours. Choosing to wear a veil is not like choosing to wear a miniskirt.
So I have been perturbed by Muslim Council of Britain spokesperson and former lord mayor of Manchester, Afzal Khan’s assertion that, ‘if constituents choose to have a particular dress code it does no harm to Jack Straw’. How apparently reasonable, but how very disingenuous. A couple of days later Afzal Khan took a whole page in the Manchester Evening News (sadly not online) to make the same point, in an ironically titled piece: ‘we need to understand the reasons behind the veil’. Without giving any ‘reasons behind the veil’ he complained that Jack Straw had given license to bigots and called for a debate on issues that (unlike the veil) matter.
As is so often the case with religious texts, there is some debate on what the Qur’an says on the matter. Most translations Wikipedia points to quote 33:59 as a warning to women to cover up so as not to be ‘molested’, but some have ‘harmed’, ‘annoyed’ or other lesser crimes.
In any case, the passage places a responsibility on women to dress in such a manner as to avoid male attention; there is an implication that the miniskirt wearer is responsible for any unwanted attention she may receive. And this is why the veil is, for many, a symbol of grotesque misogyny and the wearer pitied as a victim (whether she chooses the veil or not). I doubt this is news to Afzal Khan.
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that while the wearers of miniskirts and low cut tops cannot be held responsible for any molestation they suffer, they are aware that people will look at them and consequently have no right to complain if they don’t fancy the voyeur. It’s also reasonable to expect them to dress more modestly in, say, a work environment.
By belittling the debate as unimportant, while trying to close it off by accusing those who tackle the subject of fuelling racism, the disingenuous Afzal Khan does us all a great disservice.
If this is Manchester’s Christmas tree, and I kind of hope it is, then it’s sure to boil some blood.
Every year many pensioners fill the letters page of the Manchester Evening News with rage at the city’s failure to order the cull of a good sized pine (not that there’s anything wrong with replacing a mature tree with a more CO2 hungry sapling). To be fair, this one does incorporate real trees in pots about its base, so there’s something for everyone. I suspect it’s educational too as there’s a lot of writing on it.
If combined with a cold snap, I feel sure this beauty will a send a few old dossers to an ever so slightly early grave.
Merry Christmas everyone! This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).
Subscribe
