It Hurts

I’m going to do a post about what to do this weekend anyway but I thought there was one event that required a piece all of its own.

Hurts – St Phillip’s Church, Salford 22/01

Hurts are a band that have been tipped by several sources to be one of the biggest bands of 2010, including the Guardian, Radio1, and many others. Tomorrow night they play their first ever live gig in Salford, at one of the most interesting venues in the North West. Normally I wouldn’t advocate crossing the Irwell to the second city but St Phillip’s Church, which recently played host to a Florence and the Machines Gig, is a great venue for Hurt’s cold, 80’s influenced synth beats and cool electro pop. Tickets are still available for the concert, and perhaps it is overstating slightly to say that this will be an ‘i was there’ moment, but this is a great opportunity to see hopefully one of the biggest bands of the year playing live in their hometown in a great venue. If you needed any convincing then here are a couple of reasons:

Fair? I’ll Give You Fair! (in relation to council tax revenue)

Having slogged through council tax reforms I looked at a revision question that compared property v.s personal based council tax and wanted me to tackle the issue of ‘fairness’, and it made me angry, here is why:

“The concept of ‘fairness’ in Council Tax terms is completely subjective surely? To some people, charging those who can afford to pay more, pay higher council tax bills (through a property-based tax based on the premise that big house = big wallet) and those who are of lower-income pay less in council tax, represents a ‘fair’ system. But there are people who believe that making each individual pay the same contribution to services (through a personal tax) because everyone uses the services and has equal access (in theory) to them is a ‘fair’ way of charging individuals. Perhaps I have a clouded judgement but can someone please explain how one is supposed to decide which system is more ‘fair’ from an un-partisan point of view?”

Russian Procrastination

I was bored, I should have been revising, but I just started to think about modern Russia, not sure why; perhaps the icy scene outside my window was reminiscent of Moscow, perhaps it was the fact I had just read an article written by Dimitry Medvedev in the Economist’s The World In 2010, who can say, but procrastinate vividly I did and here are my (hastily put together) thoughts;

Firstly I must say that although I may have studied History at university I am not a Russian Historian so some of this may be bollocks and please feel free to correct me:

The architects of Russia’s leap forward have done so with morally perplexing results; simultaneously dragging this once proud beast and cultural icon of European society into the modern age, and also suppressing a nation, murdering and plundering its outlying regions, whilst providing a strong (to say the least) leadership which its population clearly craves. The sentiment of Peter the Great, Josef Stalin and (as history will surely remember) Vladimir Putin has been to try and create and later restore Russia to the level of status its ideological thought aspires to. But their leadership is remembered with the whiff of tragedy; as Stalin mercilessly drove Russia through every stage of industrial revolution in fast forward, he nearly broke her back. His monumentally high economic and industrial targets in his ‘Five Year Plans‘ were never reached but we know now that the efforts in trying to reach them in the 1930’s represent one of the staggering collective achievements of the 20th century.

That in the process Stalin’s mind was so focussed on creating a united an insular Russia under the hammer and sickle millions of his own people died, not counting the unthinkable amount of Ukrainians who died in the Holodomor of 1932-33, meaning that we will only ever remember him for that and not for transforming Russia from the stagnant and backwards Tsarist leadership, and in trying to emulate the achievements of Peter the Great he merely succeeded him in becoming Russia’s greatest ever tyrant and laid the foundations for Putin’s Russia.

When Putin was named by Time Magazine as their ‘Man of The Year‘ in December 2007 he was an obviously controversial choice, especially for us in Britain as the harrowing images of Alexander Litvinenko on his deathbed still fresh in the collective memory. But Time had their reasons and they had a point; Putin you must recall took over from Boris, not Yeltsin, but Berezovsky, for it was the billionaire businessman, not the three fingered dancing drunk who ran Russia and typified its political society after the fall of the Soviet Union. Berezovsky had been catapulted to inglorious wealth through outrageously profitable (and in all honesty hugely crooked) government contracts and was the leading oligarch when Putin was making a name for himself in the newly tarted up KGB, the FSB in the mid-nineties.

Confusingly, Berezovsky helped Putin to become Prime Minister through his media contacts but as soon Putin was in power he started to dismantle the ruling class of oligarchs who plundered the newly capitalist commercial potential, through legal and extra-legal means (just ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky et al). He has managed to destroy the fortunes of these men, imprison them or force them to flee to Britain (as Boris Berezovsky has) and returned the economy to government control (although some may say the only difference is corruption is now controlled by the Kremlin, not the levels).

Removing one problem has created another, albeit one which Russia’s leadership has no desire to remove, in that the vacuum the oligarchs left has been filled by a class of people known as the ‘chekists‘. Power is now so closely concentrated to those who tread the well-trodden path from the ’security services’ (read KGB/FSB) to the Kremlin, and just as importantly regional high office as well, that Russia is in danger of becoming a tyranny once again. Putin and Medvedev want to create a modern society, but are not willing, as are China, to realise that for that to happen they must have more than just tremendous wealth, energy and industry, they need parliamentary accountability, a free press and a just legal system.

Anna Politkovskaya and her surviving colleagues at Novaya Gazeta may disagree with the notion of press freedom in Russia, and Sergei Magnitsky may take umbrage with the idea of a just legal system. That is before we even discuss the wars in Chechnya, Dagestan and South Ossetia, the Moscow Apartment Bombings, the Moscow Theatre Siege, the Nabucco Pipeline, the poisoning of Victor Yushchenko and numerous other things that get me angry, fearful and probably assassinated, I will just paraphrase Time in that famous article when describing the achievements of Putin. The economic increases in Russia have come with ‘reductions in personal and political freedoms’. Hmm, indeed.

Anyway, that killed a fair bit of time didn’t it, back to Local Government finance.

What to do this weekend?

What should I do this weekend in Manchester I hear you not ask? Well, although it’s very snowy and the only thing you want to do is probably get tucked up in a cosy warm pub there are a few good reasons to venture out this weekend. The amount of live music across the city is less than usual; due in part to a New Year hangover and the inclement weather, but the quality is still there. Unfortunately German dj André Tanneberger, better known as ATB, was supposed to be playing at Sankey’s tomorrow night, but has been cancelled due to the weather. This is annoying, Tanneberger is one of the best trance dj’s in the world, best known over here for the massive 1998 number 1 ‘9pm Til I Come’, and it was sure to go off, but hey, ho, I’m sure he’ll be back at some point to show Manchester why he’s ranked as the #11 dj in the world. Audit Control – Night and Day, 09/01 Now for a gig which is on, I hope. Audit Control are a 5-piece band from Huddersfield who sound quite like Joy Division and The Editors. They are playing at Night and Day on Saturday alongside a battle of the bands which are usually of good quality at Night and Day. Guilty Pleasures – The Deaf Institute, 09/01 If you prefer a club night on a Saturday then you could do a lot worse than The Deaf Institute who welcome the return of Guilty Pleasures for the first time in the new year. If you enjoy dirty pop then I would definitely recommend making your way down Oxford Road come Saturday night. By Sunday apparently the weather will reach a stifling 1 degree Celsius, so if you fancy venturing into town then get yourself down to Urbis as soon as you can. The news that the National Football Museum will be moving into Urbis next year from Preston was good news for football fans (like I) but losing such an amazing space such as Urbis is definitely not worth it. The place will shut its doors for the final time as Urbis on the 27th February and will start a retrospective exhibition late this month, but for now go along and see their final proper exhibitions: Home Grown, The Story of UK Hip-Hop, and a fascinating (to me anyway) exhibition about Manchester television and its history. Anyway, if you think sod all that I am just going to find a good quiet and warm pub then you could do a lot worse than The Rising Sun on Queen Street just off Deansgate, Mulligans, a great Irish pub nestling behind Bridge Street, and one of the hottest (I mean warmth here) pubs when its busy in the whole city (mainly because its tiny) the legendary Sinclair’s Oyster Bar opposite Selfridges next to the Triangle. Wrap up warm my fellow Mancs and have a great weekend.

The End of Hibernation

Wowsers, I think I have finally come out of my festive coma, watch this space for a blogging flurry!

There have been updates to the Gig Page for the new year, I’m putting together a useful Manchester links page that should be done later this week, I’m going to post about the weekend’s music tomorrow, and keep watching for a new podcast and a new set of lists about the best places to go in the fair city.

P.s Is anyone else getting really fed up with all this snow rubbish, people baying and cooing like it’s the most interesting thing to happen in all of time, it’s just frozen water, can we just get on with things?

Same Teens, Different Class

Hello everyone, sorry I’ve been a bit rubbish lately I’ve been a very busy bunny investigating things and what not but I’m back now, and I’ll be posting a lot more Manchester stuff over the next few weeks so don’t worry.

For now I have an interview with some of the very coolest people in Manchester, Same Teens:

Same Teens have been on the Manchester scene since 2007, putting on amazing gigs and DJ’ing for some of the biggest bands around across Manchester, and this year have been playing abroad and at festivals across the country. They have also created their own online magazine XOX. Here I ask them about the Manchester scene, their new film, and try to find out the source of their name (unsuccessfully):

A N Other Manc: First of all, why the name Same Teens?

Same Teens: Why not?

ANOM: How did you come to decide to launch XOX and what do you hope to achieve with it?

SM: We’d started a club night and had started to book people from our favourite club nights in Manchester to come and DJ for us. We’d secretly started practicing ourselves and soon enough bands started asking us to DJ at their gigs – bands like Cajun Dance Party and even Iggy and The Stooges. We were having such fun times we thought people might want to hear about it – lots of us had ambitions of working in music journalism so it seemed a natural thing to do – it meant we could get through to people all round the world too rather than just people who came to our gigs and nights.

ANOM: Do you think that you could ever get it into mass print circulation round the city?

SM: We just won a bursary from the lovely people at Umbro so in 2010 it’ll be available here and in London, Berlin, New York and some other places

ANOM: Why do you think that so many magazines have launched and not been able to stick when theres clearly a big audience for culture and listings?

SM: The internet has a lot to do with it – The NME now Twitter all their news which must affect their print sales. Lots of magazines have gone from print to just web-based. We’re doing it the other way round.

ANOM: Do you think that the future is for online magazines like XOX and CreativeTourist.com rather than something like City Life?

SM: We reckon if you do something properly then there’s room for you – something like Vice will never be affected by stuff that would kill another magazine off. It’s like with music – synthesisers didn’t kill of guitars, they just jockey for position and there’s room for all the good ones. The physical format of a magazine will never go away – they’re part of our culture.

ANOM: You write a column for Artrocker how did you get involved with them and do you think its good that a magazine like that has a monthly page devoted to Manchester?

SM: We think they saw what we were doing and they asked if we wanted to contribute – it’s great that they feature stuff about Manchester as we’ve always seen it as being as relevant as London. In terms of relative sizes Manchester punches way above its weight compared to London.

ANOM: Do you feel that new music is still very London-centric or do you think My-space etc has made it more nationally spread?

SM: Everything is London-centric in way – head offices for labels, magazines and most fashion stuff is all down there so people are like moths to a cockney flame if they want to be take seriously in any of those fields.Myspace didn’t really affect things geographically as lots of smaller towns and cities had thriving music scenes. To someone from the outside, looking at the listings of gigs in London can look like a real treat but the practical hell of getting from Shoreditch to Putney on a rainy Tuesday can bring a bit of reality to things – in Manchester you can walk to every music venue in half an hour – smaller places can make things happen quicker and myspace and the internet might have helped but only a little

ANOM: I write about live music in Manchester and theres an awful lot going on but how healthy do you think the scene is at the moment, have you noticed an improvement since you’ve been part of things?

SM: It’s as good as ever – if you’re 16 to 20, you’re not bothered about some idiot telling you about Madchester or The Hacienda – stuff like Now Wave is just as relevant and is actually happening now. The improvement comes from the fact that we’ve got bigger over the last 3 years and so have some of the club nights and bands that started when we did. Wesley from Now Wave DJ’d our first all ages club night and The Answering Machine played one of our first gigs – The Answering Machine have just come back from New York and Japan and Wesley is building quite an empire. It’s like we were kind of at school together and nothing seemed serious at the start and now we’re all responsible and get asked to DJ abroad – there’s an expression ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’ – that maybe sums it up best

ANOM: Do you think that there is enough interest to sustain the amount of venues now booking lots of live music?

SM: Absolutely – the venues all differ in size and get people along to their nights – once there’s enough then people travel from miles around to come and stay and watch music. Even the MEN Arena is something to be proud of and stuff like Kraak and An Outlet that hold less than 100 people

ANOM: If you could improve the Manchester scene how would you do it is there for example a particular type of venue you would like to see that there isnt here at the moment?

SM: A big festival – Heaton Park is the biggest municipal park in Europe and could hold something as big as V or Reading. One day stuff like D Percussion has gone and we could do with something that would put us on the festival map.

ANOM: What’s been the highlight of 2009 for you guys?

SM: Dockville in Hamburg was our first DJ trip abroad – and when they sent our times through (10pm till midnight, followed by Metronomy) it was the best news we could get. Meeting Tim Burgess at the start of the year and fishing off as tour DJs for The Charlatans is something that we’ll treasure. He’s about as nice a person you could meet and our favourite DJ ever.

ANOM: How is FREE FOUR SEVEN NINE ZERO coming along?

ST: It’s all finished and we’ll be showing it in the new year – it features Mystery jets and Rufus Wainwright and we even got given a song by The Charlatans to use on the credits. It really captures and amazing couple of days and got us to work with the most talented film maker called Ellery Roberts – his band Wu Lyf played at our In The City gig and we think he’s someone to look out for in the future.

ANOM: Do you think events like The Manchester International Festival and InTheCity can become as popular as the big summer festivals?

SM: They are difficult to compare as summer festivals have everyone in the same place at the same time and people sleep there in tents. Something like The Manchester International Festival involved more people go to it than Glastonbury but nobody covered themselves in mud and got photographed. They are really different things – the biggest and best city festival for us is The Camden Crawl and we’d love In The City to be more like that.

ANOM: You guys are becoming quite legendary music power brokers in the city the line-up for your new-years party is awesome but if you had to line up your perfect night what would the line-up be and where?

SM: Can we use that quote?! ‘Legendary music power brokers’, yeah we can retire after that one. Thanks. Manchester, maybe The Northern Quarter all blocked off and each venue putting stuff on – headlined by The Flaming Lips and The Charlatans with Erol Alkan DJing (and us of course!)

ANOM: What does the future hold for Same Teens and XOX what have you planned for 2010 and what are you going to do with the Umbro money and do you have any plans to continue collaboration with Boxfresh?

ST: Yeah, Boxfresh have been good to us and we’ll always do stuff with them – 2010 will be a big year for us – the money will mean we can print XOX for a year, so that’s all good. It’s hard to make predictions but we are gearing up for the best Summer ever. Kendal Calling again, Dockville again and anywhere else we get invited

ANOM: Finally, what is your favourite vowel?

ST: e

Same Teens are throwing an awesome New Years House Party at The Ruby Lounge, but hurry because it’s unlikely tickets will be around for long

Heres a sneak preview of their film but theres no sound just yet so mute the thing okay:

Up In Arms

The Cardiff Blues are 10 games into their new home at the Cardiff City Stadium, and it seems a good point to assess fans responses to the move. On Monday I put up a poll on the Gwlad rugby message forum asking if they thought that the decision to move was a good one. Three days later the results were as follows:

21 Votes For, and 180 Votes Against.

But why are fans so unhappy? I went to speak with one of these fans, Marc Wakeham, former director of the Call to Arms group opposed to the move from Cardiff Arms Park. I asked him first whether a lack of communication from the Cardiff Blues board over the move was one of the reasons for a lack of support:

Another fan, Gagsy, said: “In fact one of my biggest beefs is that having been a season ticket holder and a member for 30 odd years, and also a share holder, I wasn’t once asked of my opinion of the move.”

Dr Gareth Brown said: “Peter Thomas gave no opportunity for other share holders to voice opinion and paid scant regard to the history of Cardiff rugby in the center of the city.  He did not make public the feasibility study he apparently had done on the possible redevelopment of CAP.”

I asked Marc about the changes made by the Cardiff Blues from the old Cardiff RFC and whether by trying to entice new fans they were driving away established support:

Mouthoftheusk said on Gwlad: “Chasing after new support, which may or may not exist and which may or may not be regular attenders, at the expense of long time support which is often more locally based is a recipe for disaster. It is a myth that you need to ditch the past to embrace the future in rugby. An expensive myth as well.”

One of the major reasons the move was promoted by the club was that a move to a new, larger stadium would increase attendances. But although on paper this looks to have happened (the average attendance last season at Cardiff Arms Park was 8,672 and this season’s official attendance is 10,590) the official figures have been roundly criticised as being artificially high by calculating attendances on tickets sold and given away rather than actual attendance. Marc was one of those fans who was sceptical of the figures and put in a Freedom of Information request to Cardiff City Council to find the true number of people who passed through the turnstiles.

The official figure for the Cardiff Blues vs Leicester game on August 21st was 15,843 but the amount of people who actually attended was 11,407. This is a difference of 4,436. The official figure for the Cardiff Blues vs Northampton a week later was 8,578 but the actual attendance was 5,500, meaning a difference of 3,078. Fans are still waiting on the results from more recent games.

Click here to see the original email from the Council.

I attended the game against Connacht last Sunday and the official attendance figure given was 7,105, but the feeling in the stadium was that this was far from accurate. I took some photos and a video of the stadium just before kick off to show the atmosphere at the game:

A fan called Twigster said to me: “The stadium is half-empty and has no atmosphere.”

One of the criticisms is that it doesnt actually belong in any way to the rugby team. The deal was originally announced as a ground-share deal (in the same way that rival Welsh region the Ospreys share with Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium) but in fact Cardiff City own the stadium and Cardiff Blues rent the use of it. Long-time supporter PhilBB told me: “maybe some of these anti-stadium views would have been kept quiet had the club negotiated a Liberty type deal.”

Some of the back-lash against the stadium move has arisen as rumours have abounded about ulterior motives for engineering a move for the Blues away from the Arms Park. The rumour that most people who I have spoken to subscribe to is that Cardiff Athletic Club, who own the Arms Park, plan to sell the land it sits on, possibly to the Welsh Rugby Union for development. This has led lots of fans to decide that the move was never in the best interest of the fans and was a way to make money out of the asset that is Cardiff Arms Park. The fact as it stands however, is that Cardiff RFC have a 15-year lease to use the Arms Park, but again rumors abound that they will have their lease cancelled and be paid off to find another home.

What the fans would like is the complete opposite, with fans rallying behind a move to bring the Blues back to Arms Park, including the creation of special badges for fans to wear. I asked Marc whether he thought it would be possible:

I also asked him whether he thought fans who had turned off going to see the Blues and gone back to their local clubs:

Some fans feel the move has improved the club’s position and I have heard some positive support, but there are large swathes of fans who feel resentment and disappointment at many aspects of the move, too numerous to fully outline here unfortunately, but I will be following the story closely as things will surely not stay as they are. Finally I asked Marc if this season represented a watershed moment for the Blues:

Kevin Devine – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff 02/12

I missed him at the Deaf Institute so I went to go and see Kevin Devine at Welsh Club this week in Cardiff. I was going to write a review, but I will instead use visual and audio means to accurately portray just how good he was. Everyone sat down like it was an assembly and Kevin was the teacher, telling us a fable. Or something like that. Anyway here’s a recording of him playing a cover of the classic Bob Dylan song ‘The Man in Me’ from the film The Big Lebowski and also playing his final song, a christmas track:

And here is a video I took of him playing the single ‘I Could Be With Anyone’ off his new album Brother’s Blood, enjoy;

he was very, very good.

Has Murdoch made Google put it’s Guns Down First

In one of my favourite television programmes The Thick Of it the minister Hugh Abbott says: “It’s very difficult to be the one who has to put his guns down first, because people usually see it as a reason to jump up and down and your head like it’s a ripe watermelon.” Or something close enough.

This morning Google announced that they are to introduce their First Click Free policy, but is this just the first step on the road to Rupert Murdoch getting what he wants, that all content that his newspapers produce has to be paid for and cannot be accessed through aggregators?

It is certainly dangerous for Google to have made the first move like this. In their words “First Click Free is a great way for publishers to promote their content and for users to check out a news source before deciding whether to pay. Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free. Now, we’ve updated the program so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing”, but users have become so used to getting as much content as they want for free how is it possible to put the genie back in the bottle? Surely people will only ever pay for something if they cannot get it somewhere else for free?

This was a question asked of us by Rob Andrews, the UK Editor at Content Next covering the digital media for Paid Content. The site was set up by Rafat Ali in 2002 and its credo is:

The company’s news sites chronicle the economic evolution of digital content that is shaping the future of the media, information and entertainment industries. Our belief is that in the near future, all media will be digital media, and we are helping define sustainable business models and innovation within this sector.

Being a trainee newspaper journalist contained in there is quite a scary thought, that the presses will stop running, and all the hacks will be out of a job. But it’s not like that, its naive to think like that. Newspapers are evolving, reporters are evolving and although right now the future is not clearly mapped out and yes we are still on the downward part of the curve after all the doom and gloom that newspapers are in a moribund state etc etc I think that with people like Rob Andrews its possible for newspapers to live on, even if the genie is out of the bottle for good. By developing online strategies and building on successes like the Financial Times website newspapers may be able to stay alive, maybe.

But back to Google and Murdoch;  Rory Cellan-Jones said in his blog today this announcement can be seen as Round One to Murdoch, but theres a long way to go in this battle. Where it will end….. well isnt that the fun?

Monday Review 30/11

Whoops, been a while since ive done one of these, not really keeping to my schedule, but here goes:

Well, well, well, a very interesting weekend indeed. It started, as it often does, with a wet Friday night Sale Sharks game at Edgely Park, except this time, some southern jessies didnt want to play because it was a bit drizzly and they might get their stilettos caught in the Stockport mud. By the time the players should have been coming out onto the pitch around 7.30pm the Wasps team were back on the coach to Watford. This is the third season in a row that Wasps have been involved in a late postponement to a match, and Premier Rugby is to fully investigate why Wasps refused to play on a pitch that referee David Rose had declared fine for the match to go ahead.

A typical Wasps player unwilling to play in slightly adverse conditions

It shows a complete disregard for the rules and a lack of thought for the 8,000 fans that had braved the inclement weather to watch them. Wasps may point to the fact that Stockport County’s match was called off as well the following day, but with all due respect that is football, and not rugby, and at least the Stockport cancellation was a decision by match officials well in advance of kick-off. I think considering Wasps’ actions they have basically thrown the game and Sale should therefore be given a the full five points.

Moving on to football, Manchester City have now had more draws thrown their way than Tom Jones (oh yes, I went there). Seven in a row is getting faintly ridiculous, and is seeing City fall off the pace in the league after genuine high ambitions earlier on. The problem for me is they are unable to keep a clean sheet when they score themselves. I have issues with their back four, not only the fact that they have been thrown together like a band of mercenaries and expected to get along like Bruce and Pallister, but with their top-level credentials. Kolo Toure is a great athlete but can be positionally weak and Lescott is a natural defender but lacks concentration. Between them they cost City goals, and points. They are not helped by a team that is light on defensively minded players ahead of them but the fact is that if they are to be competing for the highest positions they need to be holding out against teams like Hull, not being pegged back for a draw.

This is of course what happened, with City taking a late first-half lead through a Shaun Wright-Phillips goal. But the best moment of the game came as Jimmy Bullard put away his penalty to make the scores 1-1 and celebrated by imitating his manager’s infamous half-time on-pitch teamtalk in the corresponding fixture last season. It was a hilarious way to excercise the cloud that had been hanging over them since that day, when they began their free fall last season that nearly saw them relegated.

Finally on to Manchester United, who beat a struggling Portsmouth 4-1 in a scoreline that flatters them somewhat. Portsmouth caused United plenty of problems but unfortunately for them they failed to put away the great 1st half chances they carved out, Aruna Dindane being guilty of three bad misses. United went in front with a (slightly dubious) Rooney penalty, only to be pegged back when Portsmouth scored a penalty of their own through Kevin Prince-Boateng. United played better in the second-half, with Giggs putting in another great performance after a few weeks looking a bit off his usual high standards. He set Rooney up for a simple finish to put United back in front then was fouled for the penalty that gave Rooney his hat-trick and then rounded off a performance that Rooney likened to that of a 26 year-old rather than one about to turn 36 with a great free-kick late on. That was his 100th premier-league goal, and confirms what i wrote when i named him my sporting icon of the decade.

The win put United within two points of Chelsea until they thumped Arsenal yesterday, and I think any United fan should start to get worried about the Chelsea juggernaut rumbling forward to the title. They are not only grinding out wins but thumping teams as well, and United are not playing that well, and are doing just enough to hang on to their coat-tails. Fergie says he wants to be within a point of the league leaders by the new year, good luck.

Both Manchester clubs play in the league cup this week so look out for a post about the games on Thursday.

Results;

Sale Sharks P – P Wasps

Manchester City 1 – 1 Hull City

Manchester United 4 – 1 Portsmouth

Fixtures;

Manchester United vs Tottenham Hotspur (tues)

Manchester City vs Arsenal (weds)

Is This It?

Recently myself and other trainee journalists put together a list of sporting icons, mine was Ryan Giggs (you can still vote here), and now we have moved on to The Album of The Decade. This is my choice:

The Strokes – Is This It

In 2001 I remember everyone was talking about this new band from New York, and how they were set to change indie music forever. I hate hyperbole and reckless praise being showered on the ‘next big thing’ and I didnt really get involved with The Strokes even when I walked into Ourprice aged 13 and ‘Is this It’ had gone straight in at No1. I then got given a copy by my dad with a knowing look and realised that for the most part, it was all true what they said.

I was going to write about The Libertines first album, or Ryan Adams’ Gold, but every time I thought about the music that defined the decade I couldnt get this video out of my head, it is so good it blows everything out of the water. In it, a 23-year old Julian Casablancas manhandled his mic stand, eyed the camera with a hypnotic mix of rage and anxiety, tugged at his jacket as if he was about to burst. At one point, Casablancas swatted his mic down and left the stage in a huff only to return exactly as guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr. wrapped up a brief solo. The chaos, the control. The opening lyric sums it up: “Leave me alone, I’m in control”. The performance showed The Strokes at full tilt, and Casablancas even falls over and still looks cool. They showed what a rock band should look, sound, and feel like in a new millennium.

This album is jaunty, scruffy, carefree and accomplished. All 11 tracks on Is This It are straight-ahead, ebullient, desire-fuelled guitar music. They are typified by the lyrics of Someday:

Oh, My-ex says I’m lacking in depth
Say I will try my best
You say you wanna stay by my side
Darlin’, your head’s not right
See, alone we stand, together we fall apart
Yeah, I think I’ll be alright
I’m working so I won’t have to try so hard
Tables, they turn sometimes

These songs revolve around frustrated relationships and hectic lives fueled by adventure, never coming near to approaching anything that might resemble insight. Yet, with Casablancas’ self-assured, conversational delivery, and the almost primal energy of the four guys backing him, attention shifts from the simply present lyrics to the raging wall of melody these guys bang out like it’s their lifeblood. It isnt just the lyrics, its everything about them, they sound like a collective, who come together and act as one, propelling themselves forward as one. They are not ‘awe-inspiring’, ‘god-like’ or any of the other ridiculous epithets that were poured onto them when they came out. They were not the new Rolling Stones, they were a rock band. And Is This It is just a great rock record, pure and simple. They have no laser sounds, no ethereal reverb, no pre-programmed Aphex beats, just the drawling narratives of singer Julian Casablancas, the clanging of Albert Hammond Jr and Nick Valensi’s guitars, the uncomplicated recording, bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti joyfully getting on with the business of making music.

For me, great music should be about boiling down everything until all you are left with is the essence of music. Yes, of course theres a place for massive overblown, overlayered, overproduced music that exemplifies everything that is possible in music, and thats wonderful. But music, deep down is about the base emotions that it invokes, and The Strokes prove that all you need to do that perfectly is to strip it all back and just play rock music. Give me Chuck Berry or Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs or Robert Johnson anytime. The Strokes kicked real rock music out of its slumber on both sides of the Atlantic and set the blueprint for pretty much every other indie band of this decade, they were that good. Anyone who says they are style over substance or gets put off by the fact that the NME gave them 10/10 and voted it album of the decade does not deserve Is This It anyway.

To sum up, Ryan Schreiber wrote on Pitchfork in 2001 : “Of course, none of this changes the fact that Is This It lacks the creativity and unconventionality inherent in any of the all-time great rock bands they’re so impulsively compared to. Still, the Strokes have struck an incredible balance between the two extremes of rock music: sentimentality and listlessness. Any sentimentality in these songs’ lyrics is countered by Casablancas’ self-reliant indifference, and his listless delivery is offset by the band’s fervid attack. Beyond that, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it is about the Strokes that keeps me listening. All I know is that it’s not easy to come by, and I like it. A lot.”

I couldnt have put it better myself. I will leave you with this:

Please vote for The Strokes, how can you not?

Sporting Icon of the Decade

Having written about my sporting icon of the decade Ryan Giggs and my fellow trainee journalist colleagues gave their nominations, here are the final ten for the vote so have your say on your favourite:

Not that I would try and influence your decision but go on, vote for Giggsy, you know you want to!

Podcast: Id Card’s, Why Why Why?

So it is really happening, Manchester is to get ID cards in two weeks time. Not quite sure why Manchester is the Guinea Pig for this initiative after the failure of the congestion charge, something about an above average amount of young people or something, but anyway heres my podcast on the debate:

Oh and heres a video explaining a bit about them:

What to do this Weekend

Just a quick one this weekend as I’m far too busy (what an arse I sound) so here are 5 top musical based things to do in Manchester this weekend in no particular order:

1) The Chemical Brothers – Sankey’s; Tonight

I dont think I really need to hype this one up, it rather speaks for itself, the Chems are here to celebrate Bugged Out’s 15th year birthday, and all I can say is it is going to be big, very big, morbidly obese big.

2) La Roux and Zane Lowe – Warehouse Project; Saturday Night

Again not exactly a gig I have to hype up a tremendous amount La Roux is huge and Zane, our favourite antipodean Radio 1 DJ is always worth seeing, and I dont think you need a particular excuse to go to a Warehouse night this year, the general consensus id that this year it has been easily the best. Also one of my favourite bands at the moment Ou Est La Swimming Pool are also playing. My friend saw Tiga a few weeks back and he could barely speak for about 3 days. Go and see, please

3) Contort Yourself - The Roadhouse; Saturday Night

One of Manchester’s own, Contort Yourself are DJ’s who provide in their own words, “The best 8-bit-breaks, dance floor classics, punishing house and cosmic pop”. They are truly tremendous if you go to the Roadhouse I can guarantee you will have a good night* so check out their myspace and go along

4) Breakestra – Band On The Wall; Saturday Night

Breakestra are an LA based 8-piece funk and soul band who bring it hard, I’ve heard very good things about them, people have mentioned the names James Brown and Parliament to me, and it doesnt get much more funky than that. If you havent been to the BOTW since it was done up then this would be a good an excuse as any it looks great, and if you want to be funked silly (yes I did just say that) then head along

5) Datarock - Moho; Sunday Night

Datarock are awesome = fact. They may be crazy Norwegians with a list of band members that dwarfs the Polyphonic Spree but theyre blend of electro is right up my street, I cannot think of a better way of spending a Sunday night than absorbing some Datarock magic.

If you need any other listings please see my page on gigs

*obviously that was metaphorically speaking A N Other Manc cannot be responsible for you having a good night.

Why Chris Morris may soon be Dead

Chris Morris, he of Brass-Eye fame, has made a film, tentatively called Four Lions, but sometimes referred to as Boilerhouse.

Either way, it’s going to be explosive. Even for a man who starred in a TV show mocking the media’s coverage of pedophilia, this represents new levels of boundary-pushing in comedy.

The film is set to mock suicide bombers, in Morris’s own words, ‘The film will do for suicide bombers that Dad’s Army did for the Nazi’s’. Ouch.

Here is an e-mail describing what the film will have in store:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In three years of research, Chris Morris has spoken to terrorism experts, imams, police, secret services and hundreds of Muslims. Even those who have trained and fought jihad report the frequency of farce. At training camps young jihadis argue about honey, cry for their mums, shoot each other’s feet off, chase snakes and get thrown out for smoking. A minute into his martyrdom video, a would-be bomber looks puzzled and says “what was the question again?” On millennium eve, five jihadis set out to ram a US warship. They slipped their boat into the water and carefully stacked it with explosives. It sank

Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five a side football teams. There is conflict, friendship, misunderstanding and rivalry. Terrorism is about ideology, but it’s also about berks.

Four Lions is a funny, thrilling fictional story that illuminates modern British jihad with an insight beyond anything else in our culture. It plunges us beyond seeing these young men as unfathomably alien. It undermines the folly of just wishing them away or alienating the entire culture from which they emerge. It understands how terrorism relates to testosterone. It understands jihadis as human beings. And it understands human beings as innately ridiculous.As Spinal Tap understood heavy metal and Dr Strangelove the Cold War, Four Lions understands modern British jihadis.

~~~~~~~~~~

I think Morris is fantastic, but this time he may face a lynch-mob. The film hasnt exactly gone smoothly, with plans being in place for about 3 years to release it. No television network will touch it, and it looks as though it will have to be released at the cinema, with Film 4 picking it up earlier this year. It was filmed over the summer but the only the only screenshot I can find is this one.

I’ll keep you posted if I find anything more out this intriguing project, but for now I’ll leave you with some classic Chris Morris:

The Brilliant Mr Brayne

After Tinworth, Meadows, and now Rory Cellan Jones, I have been rather disappointed by my recent lecturers, but Friday marked a watershed moment.

We were spoken to by Mark Brayne, a self-confessed Psychlotherapist, whatever on earth that is, about trauma, in a lecture entitled; Reporting Trauma – Tragedy, Violence and Good Journalism. Now that didnt exactly get me salivating either, but it was extremely interesting, and quite possibly the best lecture we’ve had all term (though the competition sometimes leaves something to be desired).

It was interesting because it came at things from a different angle than others had, not surprising as Mr Brayne is a qualified psychotherapist, and it challenged us an audience much more than anyone had attempted previously. We have had a lecture on safety previously by Rodney Pinder, the Director of the International News Safety Institute, which was very informing (and slightly alarming) but this lecture looked at it from a more internal and personal aspect. He talked about how important ‘you’ are to a news story, you are the most important thing you take into the filed, without ‘you’ there is no news, sod the tape recorder, camera, Blackberry etc, without you the person there isnt news, so you have to think about yourself first.

Dear Diary; 'Still in Baghdad, still getting shot at, still alive, just.....'

But the thing I found most useful was his take on impartiality, one of the hot topics when it comes to traumatic stories. Brayne attacked mainstream media’s neutral stance on a lot of issues, saying; ‘Sometimes impartiality is an abdication of responsibility in reporting the story – just reporting one side and then the other isnt impartial when one side is definitely right – you need to make a stand sometimes.’

How refreshing. Ive had a lot of people talking about keeping the unblemished sanctity of impartiality of news in Britain compared with say Fox News in the US, and I agree it would be bad if News24 sounded like this:

But isnt it sometimes our duty as journalists and as people to write what we see, and if we see something a certain way, shouldnt we should write it as such? I think that is the most salient piece of advice I have been given as a journalism student so far.

Oh for a Mr Brayne lecture every week, even if his views on Climate Change are a wee bit apocalyptic.

ps can you imagine if Newsnight looks liked this:

Worthwhile Lectures

So just recently we had a lecture from Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent, that was so riveting that I forgot to blog about it. But here is a copy of the notes that I made for you to see what I got out of it:

So yeah, good good, as I said last time, I’ll keep you posted

Edgar Wright’s Stolen Article

Well well well, the hypocrisy of it all.

Rupert Murdoch has spent the whole of 2009 telling anyone who will listen, and a lot who didnt either, that news should be paid for, and is (against pretty much all the advice that is directed his way) forcing through pay-walls on the websites of his premier publications such as The Times.

His argument is, to precis it down, is that having all the content of newspapers on the internet for free is not making him any money. Murdoch likes making money, and he has been pretty good at making it for the last 50 years, and so he would like people to continue lining his pockets by paying for content.

His criticisms of news aggregators such as Google, and of the BBC’s (free) website has been well documented, but now it seems that one of his own publications, The Times no less, has used content drawn from another source without permission or payment for their own profit.

On Monday the actor Edward Woodward passed away, and the writer/director Edgar Wright, whom he directed recently in the film Hot Fuzz, wrote a tribute to him on his website. It can be viewed here

What then happened is the most blatant piece of article theft I have seen in my short journalistic career, The Times may as well have watched over Edgar’s shoulder as he wrote it and thought, ‘we could use that for tomorrows paper, I’m sure he wont mind’. Bloomberg covered the story by referencing the Edgar Wright article and quoting him as a source, see it here.

What The Times did was this

Not only did they steal the article for both print and online, they used a photo of Edgar Wright, and cut out large sections of the article changing the meaning and sentiment significantly. Understandably Edgar is not a happy man, as The Guardian reports here.

Edgar is not happy with Mr Murdoch

I dont know about you but doesnt it just strike you as being a rather stupid thing to have done by The Times? Unless this was a genuine mix-up where they thought they had clearance to print it, which seems unlikely, it just seems like arrogant and lazy journalism, and is not going to help convince people its worth paying for ’specialist content’ on The Times website if they just steal it from other people!

My 1st Podcast: Are Some Jobs Physically Possible

Hello, this is my 1st stab at recording a Podcast, you can judge for yourself if it is something I should continue with.

I recorded it on a train on my Iphone so the quality isnt perfect and you can hear the beep of the doors closing at a station at one point, and I have to finish it as the inspector comes round, but it’s not long so give it a listen, I discuss whether these days its possible to take on the important jobs in public office and not have it affect your wellbeing detrimentally. So here goes;

Pictures and Words and Stuff

I don’t know why but I just cannot get enthused about digital story-telling as much as our most recent guest lecturer, Daniel Meadows. If my last Lecture just left me confused, then this one left me nonplussed. Mr Meadows was an interesting lecturer, and his stories about his time spent travelling round the country in a double-decker bus taking photos of people were engaging, but I didnt feel like any of it was any use to me.

The basic premise of Digital Story-Telling is that you can give people a platform to tell their own story, through the use of narrative, videos and pictures. The idea was picked up by the BBC and Meadows oversaw Capture Wales, that gave Welsh people a chance to make a short video and have it appear on the BBC’s website. Meadows showed us a couple of them in the lecture, but I just felt that they were pretty amateurish. I know thats the point but I’m trying to learn how to be a professional journalist, someone who doesn’t make films that look like they’ve been made by someone who’s barely computer literate. I think that such a platform for people to express themselves and their stories is fantastic and a worthy project, but its relevance for me? I’m not sure.

Next up is Rory Cellan-Jones of off the Beeb, I’ll keep you posted.

Sod the Review it was a rubbish weekend!

Monday. Oh the drudgery. The reason for malaise crawling all over my usually sunny disposition you might wonder is that we have just had an awful weekend of Manchester sport.

Friday saw Sale lose to an understrengthed Dragons side in the LV= Cup, Saturday saw Manchester City slide to a 5th straight draw against Burnley, and then in the big game on Sunday, United lost (undeservedly) to Chelsea, to Rooney’s obvious displeasure shown above.

Now I’m not going to get into the controversy surrounding the game, otherwise Ill lose a bet with Will Gilgrass, so I think Ill just say this weekend was rubbish, leave it that, not bother with an actual review and get back to other Mancunian matters, such as music:

A Place to Bury Strangers

Theres some really good music as ever should you fancy going to see it this weekend, and where better to start than with A Place to Bury Strangers. I saw them live last night in Cardiff and they were spectacular, Japandroids who were supporting them said prepare to have your faces melted off, and it was a pretty accurate description of how I felt after they finished their blistering set. The set was split into two parts: heavy, and incredibly heavy. The first half of the set was fantastic melody-driven metal, but the second half of the set was bathed in noise, dripping with distortion and pounding drums. They darkly dragged the audience through 20 minutes of strobe lights and scary metal. I absolutely loved it, and would heartily recommend going to see them on Saturday at Moho Live. Another reason to go would be the aforementioned Japandroids, who will be supporting them in Manchester. They are a Canadian two-piece who play brilliant guitar-tinged garage pop-punk-metal. Theyre brilliant live and plenty of people at the gig in Cardiff had come solely to see them, theyre that highly thought of.

Japandroids

I’m trying to give you a bit more of advance warning about gigs this week, whereas I usually wait until the day before to spring things upon you, I think it’s a sign of blogging maturity? Discuss. Anyway, I have been banging on at anybody who will listen about R O M A N C E including on this blog and they are finally playing a gig within a hundred mile radius of Manchester this Saturday (although not technically true they did play The Box in Crewe last weekend but who wants to go to Crewe, honestly) when the East London dark metal band play at The Flapper in Birmingham. Yes I know it takes 1hr40min on the train but you won’t be disappointed.

If not to make a decision any harder, Manchester’s own Vile Vile Creatures are playing at The Masque in Liverpool on Saturday night as well, what is one to do? Well you could see them at Islington Mill in Salford on Friday night, and I would again heartily recommend going to see this girl punk band, and this Artrocker article agrees with me. As an aside, if you ever venture down the Mersey to Liverpool then The Masque has some really good acts on, just this week they have Dananananaykroyd and Ou Est Le Swimming Pool on the same night.

Vile Vile Creatures

Other things to do and see:

The legendary Fall are playing two nights at Moho this week, Alice In Chains are playing at The Academy on Saturday, Faithless and Felix Da Housecat play this weekends Warehouse Project, Empirical, a really interesting Jazz band are playing Band on The Wall on Thursday night, and finally Sex With Robots do their usual thing at The Roadhouse tomorrow night. Phew, absolutely spoilt for choice this week, I love Manchester, and I love music, who needs sport anyway. In fact, I dont think Ive written about a United win yet, maybe if I stop they might start winning again? Discuss.

Do we care what you think of my Blog?

In my last online journalism lecture we were spoken to by Adam Tinworth, head of blogging at RBI, and the author of One man and his Blog, a man seemingly well qualified to talk to me and my fellow young bloggers, but I found what a lot of what he said went against what I thought I had learned about blogging in the short time I have been writing (and making a pretty ham-fisted attempt at it by all accounts), but I was willing initially to cede to a man who had been doing this a lot longer than me, and an awful lot more successfully I might add.

One of the things I had contention with was his focus on not giving blogs, and especially specialist blogs an opinion, but more to collate pertinent information and links and then distribute it to your readership. I can understand the principle, whereby the author has built up a certain amount of respect for their knowledge on a subject and the readers go to it in order to be informed of things around that topic, and this certainly makes sense for Adam, whose company focuses on B2B information, but for me I just don’t see it.

On my own shoddy blog about Manchester I have tries to simply collate information on where the best places are to go on a weekend such as during the Oxjam takeover, but I felt like writing like this was a little bit cold, detached, and failed to have any of my own imprint on it, which is kind of the whole point. If people wanted to just find out what was going on they could go to somewhere like CityLife (please don’t), but I want my readers to read my blog because I sift through all the listings, find out who is really worth going to see and say why, because I am trying to convey the idea that I know what people would want to see because I go to a lot of events and have built up a certain expertise (oh dear that sounds arrogant). So surely my opinion is central to my blogging?

Maybe I'm just confused

Well, I’m off to this week’s lecture now, hopefully this will clear everything up…………..

Man Utd vs CSKA Review

United scraped a draw against CSKA Moscow last night with a performance that will not have pleased Fergie before the big game on Sunday at Chelsea. United came back from 3-1 down to draw the game after some woeful defending both sides of half-time. The defence is beginning to become a bit of a problem for United at the moment, with Vidic sidelined, Ferdinand injured/out of form, and their deputies Brown and Evans shipping three goals against an average CSKA side. On the plus side United showed great spirit in coming back and have now qualified for the next round with two games to spare, and kept their unbeaten home record in Europe.

Akinfeev will have again impressed the watching Ferguson

United went behind after 25 minutes when Dzagoev scored from a tight angle when Van Der Sar should have done better. Owen then did well to pounce in the area and poke a tidy finish past Akinfeev four minutes later. Owen did however miss several chances throughout the game and was rather defensive in his post-match interview, again bringing up the England issue, admitting both that he would love to play for England again, whilst simultaneously saying that it doesnt bother him (does that make sense to anyone else?). United the went again behind after sloppy defending when Krasic got in behind United’s defence. They then found themselves 3-1 down after poor marking allowed Berezutski a free header at the back post from a free kick. United came back into the game with the introduction of new-father Rooney but with 6 minutes to go they were still 2 goals behind. A Scholes header from a Neville free-kick brough them back into it but it took a massively deflected Valencia shot to earn United a partly deserved draw. The big talking point was Darren Fletcher’s booking for diving when it was a clear-cut trip and penalty. It wasnt perhaps, as Ferguson said, the worst decision he had ever seen, but it would certainly have more focus on it if United hadnt rescued a point from the game. Ferguson is set to try and appeal, despite the current rules that deny a yellow card to be revoked post-match.

Overall, United have progressed to the knock-outs, they have rested a few players before the big game on Sunday, and they have to think they will only get better defensively from hereon, well I hope so. Liverpool tonight, could be an interesting time for the beleagured Benitez if they dont pull it out of the fire against Lyon.

Manchester United 3 – 3 CSKA Moscow

Monday Review 02/11

 

The first of my weekly reviews of the weekend’s Manchester sport:

Starting with  Sale Sharks they managed their first win in the Guiness Premiership since the opening round against a Gloucester team in similar trouble. Now I’m often heard defending the weather in our fair city but Friday nights at Edgeley Park are usually bitterly cold affairs, wet and windy with little chance of a decent game. In fact, they represent everything that people find disagreeable with the climate in Manchester but with the recent Heineken cup win over the Cardiff Blues and now Gloucester, perhaps it might just be worth the frostbitten toes and trip to Stockport.

 

Going to Edgeley Park? Bring a coat!

As for the game, Charlie Hodgson’s boot was the main difference, scoring 23 points including seven penalties. Sale contrived to let the game slip away in the second half despite only playing against a 14-man Gloucester, with Charlie Sharples being sent off for a dangerous tackle having come on himself for an injured Mike Tindall. Lee Thomas scored a try after neat work from Dwayne Peel but Voyce replied for Gloucester soon after. Hodgson forced Sale ahead with an accurate boot as Nicky Robinson dropped points for Gloucester. Sale were 22-11 ahead when Sharples tackled Marika Vakacegu in the air and got himself a deserved red card. Gloucester finished strongly with a try from James but 2 more penalties from Hodgson meant that Somerville’s late try only earned Bryan Redpath’s side a losing bonus point.

 

Hodgson once again bailed out Sale

 

 

The victory sends Sale up to 6th in the table and will ease some pressure on new head-coach Kingsley Jones but it merely papers over the cracks. The facts are that with 2 wins in 7 premiership games, Sale don’t look like challenging for play-offs, let alone win the league this year. And it’s fairly obvious to see why: in the Summer Sale lost Luke McCallister, Fernandez Lobbe and Sebastian Chabal from the playing staff, and Saint-Andre as coach. And in fairness, the replacements are just not the same calibre, as much as it pains me, Sale will continue to struggle, fortunately they arent as bad as Leeds.

 

On to the weekend’s football:

 

Berbatov produced a bit of class to break the deadlock

United didnt exactly produce fireworks but a win is a win in the Premiership these days, with all of the big four dropping points against opposition they would expect to beat this season. It took a lovely strike from Dimitar Berbatov to put united in front in the second half and a late Rooney strike wrapped up the points. But the performance was well below what Fergie would have wanted after the defeat last week against Liverpool. The defence still looks well below last season’s highs but United sit two points of the top with a chance to leapfrog Chelsea by beating them on Sunday, so I guess it’s not too bad a position to be in. Blackburn offered little attacking wise but were difficult to break down and were unlucky to not get a goal right at the end with a truly bad offside decision letting down Allardyce’s men. The strike by Berbatov will have been much appreciated by Fergie as his touch of class to break down stubborn opposition was exactly why he was bought.A win against CSKA Moscow tomorrow night will guarantee passage into the knock-outs of the Champions League, something Fergie always enjoys sorting out as soon as possible. But United still need to improve at both ends of the pitch if they are to be challenging come the end of the season.

 

Tevez was surprisingly quiet against Birmingham

 

 

 

As for City they could only pick up a goalless draw against a committed Birmingham team that will feel they should have picked up all three points. City relied on Shay Given produced a couple of great saves including from a McFadden penalty after Kompany hand-balled in the second-half. The result makes it four draws in a row now for Mark Hughes’ men which will worry a team with genuine title ambitions. They didnt look their usual fluid attacking selves, with Tevez not providing any impetus, and Santa Cruz not looking match-sharp. Hughes is obviously in a difficult position selection wise with his vastly expanded squad but I dont think the balance of the team he picked on Sunday was quite right, and a committed and well-drilled Birmingham side reduced them to few chances. City looked laboured on the ball and were nearly punished for losing the it in their own half, Barry being particular profligate but the lively Benitez was unable to beat Given. Its been said elsewhere but perhaps out of the millions City have spent those spent on the Irish keeper may be the most astute. Hughes needs to start winning games or risk dropping back into the chasing pack from the frontrunners.

Sale Sharks 28 – 23 Gloucester

Manchester United 2 – 0 Blackburn Rovers

Manchester City 0 – 0 Birmingham City

 

My next post will be a match review of United’s game against CSKA, or possibly about Online Journalism, who can say?

Twitter, a Force for Evil?

Not really, I think is the answer to the title’s question, but it’s a good title.

Twitter has really picked up speed in the last few months, and despite the view of some that it its micro-blogging style is of little relevance, with people merely tweeting about when they are going to have lunch, it is fast becoming the premier vehicle for social media.

Recent events such as the Iranian election, the Trafigura super-injuction issue and the Jan Moir debacle have showed the power that Twitter can wield. The important point for me about all of these incidents was the speed of which people moved on Twitter, moving at a quicker pace than anyone, governments, legal firms, even the conventional media could keep up. Now it seems AA Gill is to feel the Twitter wrath as well. There is even a whole section online about the tool’s notable usage.

I’m not really sure that many people could have seen this move coming when twitter was created just last year, but the rate of change in social media moves so quickly that it leaves little time to step back, assess and investigate where things are going, you simply have to keep moving inextricably forward. Evidence of this is that Twitter created a basic application, and without knowing where it would go they allowed other people access to its code to creat their own applications, and now there are dozens of them allowing Twitter to be used as a more powerful tool than could ever have been thought.

I don’t know all of them but here are some of the ones I have learnt to understand: Tools such as Twitter-Fall have been created to watch trending topics on Twitter, lists created on TweepML to follow specific groups of people, and TwitScoop to instantly see the buzz on the social media site. There is also Tweet-Deck, which allows instant updates from both Twitter and Facebook in one place, and helps pull together lots of information.

Tweet-deck is part of an interesting development of programs created to collate information into single places. As the amount of information on the web expands exponentially, to get all of one’s news and information on the web could take hours to pull from different sites, but with the use of RSS and compatible readers (like Google’s) mean that all the information can be easily digested. This is an interesting trend, which shows how the internet creating a problem (too much information spread in too many places), and then developing an innovative solution (sites like Addictomatic) to solve it.

Come to think of it, that does sound slightly sinister doesn’t it, maybe Twitter’s evil after all