When I worked in licenced retail, one of the best things about opening a new pub was distressing the fixtures and fittings before it opened. People don’t like a pub to be too new.

But the Beech on Chorlton Green has no need for such gimmicks.

Over recent months the Beech, perhaps Chorlton’s best traditional pub has been much neglected so that today it trades on its reputation alone. Never has a pub been in greater need of some TLC. We concluded our Sunday drinking session in the Trevor Arms.
Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s Diary of Sorts.

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‘Oi! That’s not for you love!’

That’s the warning the Manchester Evening News distributor issues to any woman who attempts to pick up a copy of Short List. Short List is a magazine that’s free for men.

Despite being a men’s mag, it contains neither tits nor arse, but that Lewis Hamilton strapline is more than a little homoerotic.

I’ve never been one to read on the toilet, but Short List, with it’s bite size articles and top tens is clearly designed to be read while taking a dump.

Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s Diary of Sorts.

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Stephen
I have received a reply from Steve Webb, who is responsible for the Manifesto. No commitment to support shooting is in the current draft. I imagine that the BASC is wrong in their interpretation of events at conference.
John (by email)

John Leech MP has responded to my recent exclusive, Withington MP set to defy party on blood sports, with the reassuring email above. Knowing the Lib Dems as I do, this is as I suspected. John rightly points out elsewhere that all parties have their blood sport supporters, but it’s still disappointing that senior figures are so cosy with the shooting lobby that the British Association for Shooting and Conservation could be left with the impression that the Lib Dems will include a commitment to shooting in their manifesto.

Even so, it is extremely unlikely that blood sports supporters will ever dominate the Liberal Democrats. And should the worse happen it’s good to know that we can rely on John to pay no heed to party policy in this area, manifesto commitment or not.

‘Well Mr Newton, I was there and I heard it. I’ve heard nothing since to suggest that the party has gone back on this promise.’
– Judith Howell, BASC Political & Policy Officer, responding to the above.

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‘We welcome not only immigrants themselves, but the many gifts they bring and the values they live by.’
– George W Bush

George W Bush’s attempt to ‘make America more American’ by making economic migration easier is an initiative Gordon Brown would do well to resurrect for Britain. Sadly for America, Bush was defeated by conservative Republicans and protectionist Democrats.

And those who fear immigration have gone further. More than thirty US towns have enacted laws to counter what, for them, are the unacceptable downsides of illegal immigration. Stuff like overworked police, schools et cetera: like in Cambridgeshire.

Like Minette Marrin in the Times, they thought themselves brave to speak ‘the truth about immigration’ and wore accusations of racism as badges of honour. And on their own terms they have been reasonably successful. So successful some legal immigrants want to go too: ‘They all left. I also want to leave but it’s not possible because no one wants to buy my business.’

Having given illegals the boot by criminalising those who rent property to or employ them, these towns now struggle to come to terms with crashed property markets, boarded up store fronts and, of course, the sudden loss of cheap labour.