g7uk » LGBT

Outnorthwest front covers. Who knows who?

GS — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:09:31 +0000

Photo: by Vera Kratochvil.

In the small pond that is gay Manchester, a couple of dozen people back-pat and promote each other. Publicity and awards are given.
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Manchester Pride charity figure for 2011

GS — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:38:11 +0000

Manchester Pride has announced a figure of £105,000 for good causes.

However, only £98,000 of this amount was raised during the ten day festival. The other £7,000 came from fundraising at the Manchester Pride Dinner which took place in September 2010 — almost a year before.
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A public discussion with Julia Grant (video)

GS — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:30:47 +0000

Following my recent interview with Julia Grant, she suggested that perhaps I could organise a public discussion about the future of the August Bank Holiday event (which has been known as Manchester Pride since 2004) and the gay village.

This was arranged with the help of other members of the Facebook group Facts About Manchester Pride and was called: “Pull Your Fingers Out and Claim It Back” — a reference to something that Julia said in the interview.

The discussion took place on Thursday 25 August 2011 at the Hotel International on London Road, opposite Piccadilly Station.

The first half was about past and present. A chance for people to ask follow-up questions about the interview, or anything they’d ever wanted to ask Julia Grant. The second was about the future. What changes we would like to see and how to achieve those.

You can watch the whole thing here. It’s in four parts, with a total running time of 128 minutes.

Fireworks on the final night of Manchester Pride 2011 (video)

GS — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:49:10 +0000

Traditionally, on the final day of Manchester Pride, there’s a display of fireworks after the HIV Vigil in Sackville Park.

This video was filmed from the top of a tall building to the south. This year I got ambitious and used two cameras!

Please be warned that this contains even more flashes than usual.

Here’s my video of last year’s display.

What The Pink Paper didn’t tell you in its LGF funding cuts article. And why…

GS — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:04:03 +0000

Update: (25 October 2011): part of this article has been removed while further research is done.

“Stockport NHS cut gay charity by 100 per cent” was the emotive headline in The Pink Paper on 26 May 2011.
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Rewriting history to promote the gay village and Manchester Pride

GS — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:10:47 +0000

You may have heard about the notorious raid on a drag ball at a temperance hall in Manchester in 1880? An article in The Guardian (Village People, 7 August 2004) refers to the incident, but it begins with the scene just over one hundred years later.

In 1988 “Canal Street in Manchester city centre was still a red-light district,” writes the author. Going on to describe how police officers patrolled its “dank alleys”.

“This kind of surveillance was nothing new in the area,” she continues.
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Wynnie LaFreak delivers a letter on behalf of the Facebook group ‘Facts about Manchester Pride’ (video)

GS — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 15:05:16 +0000

In the absence of any official public forums or public meetings, we set up a group on Facebook to discuss the facts and changes people would like to see at Manchester Pride.

The questions were put in a letter and on Friday 8th April 2011 Manchester’s premier drag queen Wynnie LaFreak delivered it to Pride HQ in person. You can see what happened in this video.

Read the letter here (PDF).

LINKS

Facebook group

Message board

Wynnie LaFreak

Eight held after stabbing on Canal Street

GS — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 08:54:26 +0000

Eight men have been arrested after a man was stabbed in Manchester’s gay village.

BBC

Manchester’s gay village topped the city centre league for violent crime again in January

GS — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:42:10 +0000

The crime level street map for January shows that the gay village was again the worst spot in the whole city centre for violent crime (orange).

The village was the top spot for anti-social behaviour too (blue). I’ll let the map showing all crimes (grey) speak for itself…

You can see December’s stats in my post here.

Check out these and other stats on the Police.UK website.

By searching with a postcode you can check crime details for any area. The website also gives information about your local policing team and beat meetings.

Crime level street maps reveal Manchester’s gay village is the worst part of the city centre for violent crime

GS — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 07:47:29 +0000

The government’s new crime level street maps show that Manchester’s gay village was the worse hot-spot for violent crime in the whole city centre in the month of December.