Animal stories abound in Manchester this week, not that we’re complaining. We like animals – especially ones that swear. Charlie, an African Grey parrot who usually lives in Bury with his owner, likes to swear...and he’s escaped. That’s right – this really is news around here. At least it gives the local rags the chance to play with headlines such as ‘Oh ****! Charlie the swearing parrot takes off.’ Shameless.
If you’re in the Bury area and you hear a bit of offensive squawking, look up. You’ve probably found Charlie. And he might not respond too well to a simple ‘here pretty boy’. Try a more sergeant major like ‘get the f*uck down here now you little runt.’ It might work a little better.
A flash mob hit Manchester’s Market Street at the weekend with the express purpose of paying homage to the king of pop. For those of you not familiar with a ‘flash mob’, no flashing is involved – at least not generally and certainly not in this case. It involves a large group of people descending on a public place and all performing a pre-arranged action – this can range from a simple ‘everyone lie on the floor for a minute’, to pillow fights and ‘everyone wear a santa outfit' to the increasingly popular dance flash mobs – where everyone performs the same organised dance routine. The idea behind the whole thing is that people (normally students) like to feel like they’ve been involved in something a little bit ‘crazy’, because, you know, lying on the floor in the middle of a shopping centre is so out there.
This current trend for dancing ones is a little more understandable, if somewhat more difficult to organise. Anyone can lie on the floor but how can you guarantee that everyone turning up for a dance mob is going to be any good at dancing? Well, you can’t, as evidenced by this video – kudos for trying though and putting Manchester on the ‘flash mob’ map.
Here’s a couple more on a slightly bigger and it has to be said more successful scale. This one was organised for advertising purposes by a mobile phone company:
The canals of Manchester are home to many things. I’ve seen beer cans, shopping trolleys, crisp packets, shoes, drunk people and lots more. One would imagine bodily fluids make up a significant percentage of the murky waters, particularly in the areas where Canal meets city centre and acts as a nice thoroughfare, a relaxing vista or a conveniently secluded place for a post-club piss/shag. You would perhaps not expect large, apparently healthy fish to therefore be habiting such stretches of canal. They’d prefer a nice picturesque bit out in Marple or the countryside somewhere, right? Not so, as recently proved by a young fisherman who decided to ‘stick a line in’ (that’s proper fishing talk that is) behind Sainsbury’s on Oxford Road and found this thing hungry for his bait:
That’s a big fish. One can’t help wondering that perhaps the city centre diet fed into the canal is helping such beasts thrive. Instead of insects and water grubs (or whatever it is fish eat) these monsters are surviving on discarded kebabs and burgers. For all we know, that pike might be one of the small ones.
The Big One, for the uninitiated, is a massive student pub crawl, held annually for the last few years along Manchester’s most famous studenty street – Oxford Road – and on into the infamous Deansgate Locks. It is, by all accounts, a messy affair – close to 5,000 students, all dressed in the same t-shirt (the t-shirt, bought for £10, is effectively your ticket – no t-shirt, no entry) all with the aim of getting as obliterated by alcohol as possible. Students getting pissed is, of course, not a new thing but the last Big One has cause a stirring in the realm of officialdom, after complaints by city centre residents and reports of lewd and unruly behaviour.
People were pissing in the streets, apparently, and making noise outside flats. Then The Big One started and more people were doing it. Isn’t that what happens when you live in a city centre? Anyway, no one got seriously hurt or anything but some residents complained so a bloke from the council who might have some say in these sort of things has said he’ll investigate – by going on the next Big One himself to see what it’s like. Nice image – a 50 something year old suit mixing it up with the young, crazy students. We might go down ourselves, purely in the name of research you understand.
You will have noticed, it’s started. The World Cup is now in full flow and the major stories after four days of play are as follows:
1. Vuvuzelas are plastic horns traditionally blown at South African football matches, constantly. They will not be banned. They are annoying. 2. England has goalkeeper problems. 3. Germany look rather good. 4. Wearing orange dresses to matches is illegal.
This last one may have slipped your notice. It came to me via the medium of Twitter – which I won’t go into again. A group of young female Dutch fans went along to watch their national team all wearing the same orange dress – orange being the Dutch colour. They watched the first half happily, cheering their team on, but come the start of the second half they were surrounded by security and – all 36 of them – arrested and removed from the stadium. Why? Because their collective fashion sense was deemed to be ‘ambush marketing’ by Fifa officials.
The dresses (short, tight) were distributed by Dutch beer company Bavaria to help female fans show their support for their country. Their presence in the stadium, being worn, coincidentally, by 36 attractive blonde women, was deemed by Fifa to be an underhand advertising technique by Bavaria, keen to cash in on airtime from the (purported) biggest sporting event in the world which is, you will not have failed to notice, officially sponsored by Budweiser. Protecting their corporate clients then, one would assume. Let’s take a look at what all the fuss was about:
Very orange. The dresses, incidentally, don’t have any branding on them whatsoever – they are, in essence, plain pieces of orange material. It’s a strange world we live in.
I’ve been using Twitter for a little while now. For those of you who don’t use it, or hate it, don’t worry – I’m not going to go on about it here too much. I use it occasionally but I’m not a total Twitter fanatic – we use it as a way to let people know what’s going on with the site but I’m not about to start ‘Tweeting’ what colour underpants I’m wearing or anything (blue).
Occasionally, something of note will come up through my ‘feed’, however (those of you who don’t know what a feed is...don’t worry about it), this time from one of Manchester’s finest offspring, Jason Manford. The comedian, yeah? OK – so I ‘follow’ Jason, which means when he writes something on his Twitter it appears on my ‘feed’ (I’m only just beginning to realise how utterly ridiculous this all sounds). Today, he mentioned that he was having a little trouble on Facebook – for those of you who don’t know what Facebook is, stop reading now and go and do something else – you obviously don’t belong on the internet. I’m not saying I’m particularly in love with Facebook but, you know – it’s like watching the TV and not knowing what the BBC is.
Anyway, what was I on about? Oh yeah, Jason and his Facebook strife. He’s recently taken a new job co-hosting The One Show Mon-Thurs (if you don’t know what The One Show is, it’s a popular evening magazine programme on BBC 1 – if you don’t know what BBC 1 is, see my previous comment then go to a doctor) meaning he can’t now perform on some dates he had scheduled for week nights on his forthcoming tour– full refunds are being offered or alternate dates next year. Inevitably, some people aren’t happy and, through the medium of Jason’s Facebook wall comments facility, they’re letting him know.
“The point is its unfair on people who have made plans and paid money only to find out Jason has something else he would rather do and has changed the date.”
“i am not happy i brought my husband tickets for the 14th july in stoke as a wedding present he has the day off work for nothing.”
Some people also have a problem with the shift key, evidently.
Jason has, admirably maintained a presence on this and replied to nearly all comments, apologising where necessary and attempting to keep a grasp of reality with others. One lady, with tickets booked for a show due to take place in six months time, was moaning that she had booked a baby sitter and would now have to cancel. Yes, six months in advance. I’m sure the 15 year old daughter of a friend in question will just about be able to manage her calendar sufficiently to not let this affect her social life too much.
I’ve gone a bit off track here so I’ll end with a thought inspired by all the explaining I’ve been doing above. You know the annoying call centre people who phone up offering internet deals, mobile phones and all sorts of other ‘not to be missed’ offers? If you have a few minutes, a good way to inflict a fraction of the annoyance they bestow on the rest of us is to play the ignorance card. I did it once with someone trying to sell me a new broadband connection. “What’s that?” I asked. “It’s like fast internet.” “Internet? What’s that?” “It’s...err...on your computer...” Much mirth was had. I’m going for a lie down.
As far as quotes go, ‘Manchester’s got everything except a beach’ is a pretty good one to sum up this settlement (although this one is pretty good too:"Mancestre....is the fairest, best buildied, quikkest and most populus Tounne of al Lancastreshire" – not written by an educationally challenged 14 year old, as you might imagine, rather some bloke called John Leland in 1538 – they talked a bit different back then).Ian Brown’s comment was not, I don’t think, intended to push or inspire anyone to actually give Manchester a beach – it was a sound bite from a plain speaking Mancunian and I am not convince Brown has ever actually wished that Manchester did have a beach.No matter – inevitably, someone was going to attempt to complete this city and provide a version of this absent beach.
A few years ago, Sankeys, one of the city’s biggest clubbing destinations, had the idea to do just that and piled a load of sand up in their courtyard.The reality of Manchester’s first beach perhaps wasn’t what people had in mind – rather than looking like this:
It was more like this:
Still, they tried.That initial attempt didn’t come to much and the council expressed an interest in reviving the Manchester Beach Project after that, with the area around the Urbis a target for the next large shipment of sand.Cocktails, hula skirts, relaxed, summery vibes and beach parties were all planned and promised and it looked like Manchester would finally get something close to a ‘beach’ a few years ago – then the council bottled out at the last minute.I think they realised that lots of sand in a public area plus Manchester’s notorious summer weather (i.e. rain) weren’t the best combination.
Last year, Sankeys got hold of the idea again and did actually install a beach – well, they put loads of sand in their courtyard again and sold some cocktails – and they are returning to the theme this year, determined that the start of summer and the World Cup are going to join forces and finally make this ‘Manchester now has a beach’ thing a success.They tell us that as well as a BBQ and a huge screen for all the England and Brazil World Cup matches, there will also be a shower and a Jacuzzi for that proper relaxed summer beach vibe.Let’s just hope the weather is suitably rain free to assist with this beachy pursuit but if the World Cup can’t make Manchester love a beach then next year it might be time for a rethink; maybe Manchester just doesn’t want a beach.
I know someone who worked at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.One of her jobs was to greet the Brazilian team as they arrived at a hotel.They got off their bus at a leisurely pace, not due to fatigue or having become jaded by the whole World Cup experience, but because they were dancing, singing, banging drums and generally having a massive party, enjoying themselves whilst being a part of one of the biggest sporting events in the world.
The England team arrived in South Africa today.According to its website, their five star luxury hotel – sorry, training camp – “boasts an unusually wide range of professionally designed pitches, fields and tracks, cutting-edge equipment and top-class gym and medical facilities.”It’s at high altitude, to help the players fitness levels for the tournament ahead and is, by all accounts, a wonderful place to be.
So you’d think there might be a bit of excitement about them wouldn’t you?Especially considering they have, as the tabloids are inevitably reminding us every day, ‘the best chance of winning it for some years.’Their arrival was greeted by the staff at the complex performing some sort of traditional dance – lots of clapping, smiling, children with footballs, that sort of thing.The response from the England team, clad in their dull grey suits, was, as you will see here, stoical at best.Frank Lampard’s bored glance around the 5 minute 11 second mark is particularly telling.Let’s hope this disaffected arrogance doesn’t translate itself to the pitch too much.Maybe a bit of South African spirit in their playing wouldn’t go amiss – a smile or two would be a start.
Unite arrives in Manchester this week – those of current BA cabin crew strike fame.Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve heard a little of what’s going on.BA cabin crew are going to stop going to work for a bit until BA give them some more money – sorry, rights, workers rights.Basically, from what I can tell, they want some cheap tickets.
Like all good journalists, I decided to do some research – I read the BBC website for a bit, from where I garnered the following information:
-The dispute started in November when BA reduced the number of cabin crew on long haul flights from 15 to 14.
-BA have only taken away travel perks from those who took part in a previous walk out, in March.
-They are also pursuing disciplinary action with some of those who walked out.
-Average earnings of BA cabin crew is £29,900.
-Average earnings of Virgin Atlantic cabin crew is £14,400.
-In the twelve months to March this year, BA lost £531 million.
-£531 million is quite a lot of money, even to an airline.
As with any such high level dispute, finding an answer isn’t necessarily a simple thing.On the face of it, BA are in some trouble and are attempting to save a bit of money.Cabin crew, who seem to be bearing the brunt of this money saving initiative, aren’t particularly happy about it.They do, however, on the face of it, get a pretty decent deal within the industry.
Budget airlines have apparently, been taking a large chunk of BA business over the last few years, hence the need to implement permanent changes.I do see the need from the cabin crew to make a stand but if someone asked me where I was going to get £531 million from, I’d be hard pushed to come up with a better sounding idea than cutting crew from 15 to 14.Then again, I’m not the boss of an airline or the leader of a union.Thankfully.
Regular readers of this blog will know that my ‘research’ tends to take me to amusing videos or pictures which I, generously, have a habit of sharing with you.This time is no different – while I am unable to offer a firm, reasoned argument either for or against the strike, my friend here at ‘Powerful Peanuts’ has no such failings.He’s pretty sure of which side he’s on.(Warning – contains strong language and opinions some cabin crew may find offensive)
