More to come very soon, including a super-widescreen video.

Manchester Pride 2008 opened last night. A group of 18 year olds gathered to release a bunch of 999 pink balloons, in recognition of the fact that it is 18 years since the first August Bank Holiday event.

But, to the dismay of the organisers, young queer activists surrounded the balloons.

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Did I miss something? When did it become OK to copy and paste an entire article and photo onto a blog?

Here’s the original article about the Carry On films on the BBC website and here’s the pirate version on reelstreets.com — a site that charges a subscription — and without so much as a credit for the BBC site.

No doubt the BBC can take a hit like this. But how on earth are smaller content producers ever going to earn a living with such blatant theft going on?

Sunrise Bakery Jamaican fruit buns in the Hulme branch of ASDA: one large, one small.

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The water company is digging up the road at the junction of Deansgate and Peter Street. They’re replacing the old Victorian water pipes.

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If you want an example of how the current economic situation is hitting retailers, take a walk along Manchester’s King Street.

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The property crisis continues, with Manchester one of the cities that stands to be most severely affected (along with Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield), in part due to over-supply. And it seems to me that many of the ‘luxury’ apartments in the city centre are anything but.

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Parked at a junction, on double yellow lines, in a bus lane and blocking a cycle path, on Wilmslow Road next to the Contact Theatre, at 7.30pm last night (Friday 1 August).

The driver was nowhere to be seen and the passenger was reading a celebrity magazine with an article about Britney Spears.

In my opinion the area between here and Platt Fields Park is one of the most dangerous for cyclists in the whole of Manchester.

‘Scientists have devised a cheap and simple method of turning water into rocket fuel using solar power in a development that could generate a new source of green energy for the home and workplace.’

The Independent.

Channel 4 News reveals how film-makers are using footage from public cctv cameras. It’s called ‘video sniffing’.

Manchester Pride has admitted that it is unable to explain figures that were quoted by its Chairman Andrew Stokes in an interview that appeared on the rainbownetwork.com (gaydarnation.com) website in August 2007.

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