I am a journalist, writer and broadcaster ... lately I've been concentrating on music, I spent many years as a music critic and a travel writer ... I gave up my last editorship a while ago and started concentrating on my blog. I was also asked to join AirTV International as a co host of a new show called Postcard ...
Piers Morgan has left packed in Good Morning Britain over the Meghan Markle debacle.
A statement from ITV said: “Following discussions with ITV, Piers Morgan has decided now is the time to leave Good Morning Britain. ITV has accepted this decision and has nothing further to add.”
The decision after Ofcom said it was investigating after receiving 41,000 complaints.
Piers had said he “didn’t believe a word” the duchess had told Oprah Winfrey in an interview. He had also stormed off set after a row with co-star Alex Beresford.
Hough Hall is finally going, going gone. And we should be angry
This photograph shows it’s all over. No fighting back, it’s the time of the end.
Hough Hall, Moston, is going going gone.
Its fate was sealed at the end of last year when it was sold at auction for a measly £165,000.
And very soon 500 years of the history our little suburb three miles from the City of Tall Towers – the industrial metropolis of revolution – will be replaced by 12 houses and six apartments.
What a sad day it was when Alan Hampson, who writes for the excellent local internet magazine Another Music, took this photograph. Thank you for sharing it Alan.
What a travesty.
The Tudor mini-mansion is smashed and broken, its windows stare with black emptiness, its buttresses are twisted and the spine of the roof is breaking and exposed. Hough Hall is falling to the undignified throws of its cold harsh death as Spring arrives.
But once again there is a mystery?
Why is the council taking at least part of the hall down?
Why isn’t the builder doing it?
The note pinned to the old oak door says baldly that the city council has not contacted the owner and is going ahead with the – at least – partial demolition because an area of the hall had become dangerous.
Surely, it was potentially dangerous before a few days ago? After all our diminished piece of history has been horribly neglected for all the decades of my life.
If you were brought up in Moston, Hough Hall has been a sentinel of history for you. It was, as far back as I remember, the dirty rugged enigmatic, roughly romantic, mysterious inspiration that began me thinking of, and respecting, the things of the past, how history shaped us, how we lived and how architecture fitted in with us and protected us.
***
Everyone you know someday will die. And places and buildings almost always go on far beyond us. Hough Hall didn’t make it.
But there are so many stunning and evocative buildings in Moston that we need to do everything we can to protect, save them from the ravages of time, weather, business and those who have dominion over us and what is ours.
Let’s fight to keep those things that are part of what made us who we are today…
Manchester writer, Dorrie Bridge asks a question that matters for our elderly sacrificial lambs.
One of today’s headlines in the press is that a fair percentage of the over 80s, having had one dose of the vaccine – or two in some cases – have been breaking the lock-down.
In the main it seems to be that they are ‘mixing’…
… meeting people outside their ‘bubble’, and they are meeting indoors.
Now, we in this age group have been the ones who have stayed at home and, basically, been asked to Save the NHS. Again, some of us have followed the rules to the letter because of being warned by our GPs of our High Risk status.
Let’s get this straight, being over 80 doesn’t make you suddenly become sheep. The vigilance asked for by government and by science has been adhered to by individuals prepared to make the sacrifice, having thought through the reasons as they would have BEFORE they were 80.
You don’t suddenly stop reasoning or having logical thoughts – you are the same ‘thinking’ people in the main as you were at sixty five or seventy five.
Many who have made sacrifices have suffered great distress and anxiety. They have quite rightly occasionally thought they were being made into sacrificial lambs.
Now having been invited to the vaccination, being the first guinea pigs to take it so to speak, they are trying to pick up some kind of life.
Unfortunately the powers-that-be are not giving out the message clearly enough – the vaccine will not stop you getting the disease, it will mean that (in the older group) you are less likely to go into hospital and die.
However the vast majority of younger people are not yet vaccinated and the spread of Covid is still very high. This fact alone means that nobody can mix freely, whatever your age. I gather that the overall message which needs to given to the entire population is that when we get as near as possible everyone vaccinated, twice, that could result in ‘herd immunity’.
The attainment of this aim is some way in the future and also subject to confirmation and a close eye on the rest of the world to avoid re-infection from countries who may not have reached our ‘herd immunity.
I know that the figures out today about the over 80s feeling a false sense of security are not just statistics. We are all sick and mentally drained with isolation but can someone get this message across – and give us all a chance of freedom in the future.
Obviously this message needs broadcasting far and wide.
It isn’t just a percentage of the over 80s who are deciding they can now ‘mix’ – the more people who are vaccinated, in all age groups, the more they will precipitously mix. Keep up the precautions, ease them as advised and little by little our lives may start again.
#over80s #covid #vaccine #warning #mixing
Take it as read … parental alienation is a crime, it’s just the law doesn’t recognise it
Let’s look back at the stories about Parental Alienation which appeared on the Preservation Society … we are one of the very few professional publications and broadcasters to keep the shame of the family courts, social workers and CAFCASS in the public eye on an almost daily basis. Here are the latest:
There will soon be a hole in the ground where a ratty old piece of black and white history once stood. And very soon the glimmer of its memory will be gone too.
Its history, beauty, the ghosts that hid their stories in its ancient corridors from urban explorers, heroin addicts and rough sleepers will all be buried under replicant boxes, The headstones of dead history.
Greater Manchester believes it needs 50,000 affordable homes by 2037.
But will the impending destruction of ancient Hough Hall, Moston, Manchester, make any difference to this ambition?
Not really.
But it will l make a difference to the face of our dower and dreary suburb of the City of Tall Chimneys.
As Moston blusters into the future another feature will have been incised from its battered old countenance. And builders will ‘bottox’ the wound with little bijou boxes.
Yep, I’ll say it again … boxes. Boxes for people. Coffins of the imagination. Boxes more brutal than the New Brutalism of the 1960s. Architecture that left our inner-cities prickled by preposterous proboscises that would have had Le Corbusier turning smugly in his concrete grave.
Actually, the first British tower block was built in 1951, The Lawn in Harlow, Essex.
It is a Grade II listed building and still standing.
Moston’s Hough Hall was a Grade 11 listed building too. But rumour reached us today that demolition had already started. One of its chimneys was being dismantled, an old pal told us. It might just be that it’s dangerous.
But soon its timber frame on a stone plinth and large winged gables, rafters, galleried entrance hall, its new dog-legged staircase, muntin-and-rail panelling and stone chamber fireplace will all disappear piece by piece. And forever.
It is estimated that the hall would have cost about £100 to build as a farmhouse about five hundred years ago.
Last year it was sold into its final resting place for around £165,000 – about £60,000 less than a detached house on that other almost-entirely lost site of history, Yeb Fold, costs today.
So little now is the price of memory and heritage.
And yet Hough Hall, with its narrow windows and heavy oak doors, had stood its ground through civil and world wars, blitz and bombs, depression and boom, neglect and abuse.
And a thousand winters and summers.
All gone now.
You can’t blame the builders for its vanishing, it’s their job to build. And the fathers of this sprawling city believe they still need tens of thousands of new homes despite the fact that almost 20,000 houses are empty all around them.
Neither can the blame be laid squarely at the feet of the Barnard family who had so many hopes when video artist Roger bought it decades ago. They, sadly, were dogged by bad-luck health.
But we can point the finger at the local council and other authorities and organisations put into place to protect our heritage and history.
Look at the city centre itself with its great eccentric shards of glass and cantilevered skinny skyscrapers, its Berlin Wall monstrosity built to commemorate the 1996 IRA bombing, and the ‘Gingham’ Motel One on the site of the old Twisted Wheel nightclub where Northern Soul was reputedly born.
They could have protected the terraces of Moston, you know. And the cinemas and the pubs. They didn’t have to knock them down.
Look at Didsbury with its very expensive and charming two-up-and-two-downs and its old-fashioned, modern hostelries.
So why did they? Well, the answer is simple, they didn’t like Moston or Newton Heath or Midleton, or Ashton etc etc. We were the North.
And there has always been a great divide in Manchester between the North and South.
Us Mostonians are good people and we deserve better.
And don’t forget they are about to take the glorious Art Deco Adelphi from us now.
The BBC has reported the death of Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the age of 101. He was at the vanguard of Karouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and all those others who grew their hair, smoked psychedelic cigarettes and drank tinctures of poetic darkness and light.
Ferlinghetti and his cronies were the people who set the likes of Warhol, Morrison, Cohen and Dylan free to delve in to the ‘smoke rings of their minds…’
Farewell Ferlinghetti, so many of us will never forget you … here’s what the BBC said about you
Dr Adam Marshall, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, says that despite Boris’s road map to the future, British jobs still hang by a thread’.
He said: “Many hard-hit businesses simply don’t have the cash reserves needed to hold out several more months before they are allowed to reopen.
“Even with the Prime Minister’s new roadmap, the future of thousands of firms and millions of jobs still hangs by a thread
“Businesses will hold the Prime Minister to his pledge to support firms for the duration of the pandemic, as this gruelling marathon nears its end. Businesses have haemorrhaged billions of pounds over the past year and need action now.
“It is helpful that many businesses across England can now see a path to restart and recovery. Absolute clarity and honesty will be needed every step of the way over the weeks ahead, so that businesses have a fighting chance to rebuild. The stop-start dynamic of the past year, which has so damaged businesses and communities, must come to an end.
“All the key support schemes for business should be extended – through the summer and wherever possible throughout 2021 – to ensure that as many viable firms as possible can make it to the finish line and recover.”
On vaccination and testing, Marshall added:
“It is also critical that alongside the pace of the vaccination programme, workplace testing is expanded to businesses of all sizes and continued for as long as is necessary – to help keep our companies and communities open over the months ahead.”
On international travel, Marshall said:
“The safe restart of international travel is critical to UK trade, to hundreds of thousands of UK jobs, and to the prospects for a Global Britain. Companies want hard answers and a coordinated international approach agreed as soon as possible.”
On businesses facing the longest possible restrictions, Marshall said:
“The long wait continues for some businesses of critical importance to our local economies, including events. The task forces convened to look at how to reopen these sectors must deliver results quickly.”
#BORIS #COVID #UK #BACK #BUSINESS #MARSHALL
Pray that after 58 years of waiting, lost boy Keith Bennett may finally come home…
His lonely grave could be found as Patel calls for Brady files to be made public…
Home Secretary Priti Patel is supporting police with new measures which could finally see Ian Brady’s ‘secret’ files exposed to the public.
The new powers could help police track down human remains and bring closure to families whose loved ones vanished.
The need for these powers was brought to light by the horrifyingly tragic story of Keith Bennett who died at the hands of evil Brady and his twisted lover Myra Hindley.
They hid his body away on the moors near Saddleworth and they both took Keith’s final resting place to their own graves.
But Brady’s secret files, locked in suitcases in a storage unit might soon be released to Keith’s brother Alan and the public.
Brady
Due to what is described as a legislative gap, police officers have been unable to access information put in storage by Ian Brady prior to his death.
Police have applied for a warrant to open the cases, but this has so far been refused by the courts on the grounds that any evidence in the suitcases cannot be used in criminal proceedings, as Brady is dead so cannot be prosecuted. The executors of Brady’s estate have declined to hand them over to the Bennett family.
Keith vanished in 1964, when he was just 12 years old. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley later admitted to his murder, but his remains have never been found.
The proposed new powers would give police the legislative basis they need to apply for a warrant to access this information. The granting of any such warrant would be a matter for the courts.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “I can only imagine the years of pain and turmoil that the Bennett family have faced following Keith’s tragic murder – no family should have to suffer the heartache of not knowing where their loved ones are buried.
“I am determined to give police the powers they need to access all available evidence and hopefully bring some closure to families in cases like these.”
Alan Bennett said: “Keith’s story will be known to many, but what may not be known is the struggle which our family has gone through to try and seek closure.
“I have fought long and hard on behalf of my brother to bring about the necessary changes and to ensure his case is not forgotten.
“I want to ensure a positive legacy for Keith, so I was pleased to meet with the Home Secretary and to hear about the work being done to support my endeavours.”
The new powers will empower officers to seize evidence which they believe may help locate human remains outside of criminal proceedings, subject to a warrant. This would help in missing persons cases, suicides, and homicide cases where a suspect is known but cannot be convicted – for example, where the suspect is dead.
It is hoped that these powers will remedy the gap in the law and help provide closure to families when information comes to light about the location of their loved ones who have gone missing, or where people are presumed dead and their remains have not been found.
The measures will form part of a major forthcoming Bill to reform the criminal justice system and provide better support to police, victims, and the public.
At 11:50am on August 15, 2018, Bob Dylan’s Hurricane was broadcast by New Zealand’s Coast FM radio.
Then a single complaint from a listener flooded in.
Somebody called Grant Avery claimed that the 43 year old ‘outlaw’ song about boxer Reuben Carter was racist.
Avery’s complaint flopped like a floundering fish on the station manager’s desk.
Just one word in the song’s lyric had offended him but suddenly this protest song written by Dylan and sometime co-writer Jacques Levy, went up on ‘trial’.
Mr Avery – who some might call a Mr Jones – probably settled back smugly into his useless and pointless woke knowledge, and never once thought ‘oh my God am I here all alone, attacking Bob Dylan for racism..?’
Far from being a song of dissent Hurricane actually blows angrily at the racist punches Carter rolled with before his wrongful conviction and imprisonment in 1966.
And yet Grant Avery had decided that he should try and pull this song in to shadows of disrepute. Dylan sings: ‘To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum / And to the black folks he was just a crazy ******/ No one doubted that he pulled the trigger’.
Yep, the N-bomb.
A word we have decided not to use, for one simple reason, the mindlessly woke robots and spiders of social media will take offence, just like Mr Avery did.
But I will defend to the hilt of a sword-swallower’s blade, Bob’s right to use the word in a literary sense, within context and in the narrative of a true story about racism. After all he is steeped by choice in black music and culture.
Mr Avery’s complaint eventually ended up on the hallowed desks of the Broadcasting Standards Authority which, after some deliberation, quite rightly dismissed it.
The authority had taken into consideration the historical and social significance of the song and Bob Dylan as an artist, and the use of the word in the narrative of a 1970s political protest song.
Something Mr Avery obviously hadn’t thought about in his shallow black and white world.
Dylan has always written songs about the injustice of racism – songs like The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and Joey about Brooklyn mobster Joey Gallo.
And last year he dedicated his only interview to the awful death of George Floyd.
Dylan told the New York Times he was “sickened” to see Floyd “tortured to death” by a police officer.
***
But Avery wasn’t the first to distort Dylan’s political world… France – yes the country! – threatened him with jail after accusing him of ‘inciting racial hatred’.
In 2012 he had been speaking to the French version of Rolling Stone. Just before he was nominated to receive the Legion d’Honneur from France’s then Socialist government.
This was a government that at times seemed to spout his lyrics more often than their own political policies.
But a group of Croatian political activists – a year after the interview – had taken offence at Dylan saying: ‘Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”
So, France charged him with incitement to race hatred. Croation activist Vlatko Maric publicly condemned Dylan saying: “You cannot compare Croatian criminals to all Croats.”
They had ignored the fact that Dylan had also said in the interview: “It’s like the United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn’t give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that’s what it really was all about.
“This country (the US) is just too fucked up about colour. It’s a distraction. People at each others’ throats just because they are of a different colour. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighbourhood back. Or any anything back.”
The charges were a backlash about Dylan receiving the Legion d’Honneur.
But if Dylan had been convicted of this charge, he would have faced a sentence of a year in prison and a fine of up to 45,000 euros.
After five months a judge threw out the case case saying that as Dylan had not provided his consent for his Rolling Stone statements to be published in France – where hate speech is illegal – he didn’t incite anything in the country and shouldn’t face the charges.
***
And in another show of political chicanery that went wrong, there was a howl of protest from the Secret Police in Czechoslovakia when Bob’s second album hit the shops in 1963.
Freewheelin’ was being seen as a call for freedom across the world and became one of the anthems adopted by hippies who were bringing revolution to the streets and music to cafes like Gerdes Folk City.
In fact its most famous song was just an opaque piece of poetry which posed question after question but left everything Blowing in the Wind when it came to answers…
However, it was seen as enigmatic and powerful enough to be latched onto by the Civil Rights Movement and immediately placed Dylan firmly at the top of the list of folk luminaries like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seger and Utah Philips.
However, somebody in Czechoslovakia’s State Office of Censorship had decided to give the go-ahead for the album’s release in what, at the time, was one of the most oppressed countries in the world.
They had obviously missed the point of the nuclear war protest of Hard Rain, the attack on governments and war mongers in Masters of War and the strange Talkin’ World War Three Blues – and, an anathema to any communist state, a song called I Shall be Free.
Supraphon, one of the three major state-owned labels, jumped the gun so-to-speak and rushed the album out. Supraphon had come into being in 1932 and was better known for its offerings of Czech classical music.
Jan Sestak, later to be known as the country’s shadowy Railway DJ, told me: “It was spell-binding when we heard of the release, I couldn’t believe it, the world’s most dissident and political song-writer had his album released in our oppressed country. Songs about America, the Empire of Evil were in our record shops…”
But the joy didn’t last long as the hard reign of communism caught on to the mistake and the whole of the management at Supraphon’s head quarters disappeared.
Still, Jan, who for many years had been listening to Western music under his pillow in his bedroom, with the Secret Police prowling the streets near his home, by now had his copy. Jan, who is now in his 70s, but still lives in Brnu, near Prague, translated Dylan’s convoluted lyrics and distributed them to fans of Western music and local bands who played the songs in dark and dingy clubs across the city.
