g7uk » community

What people are asking this week (no. 789): The LGF

GS — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:53:48 +0000

Why doesn’t the name of the LGF (or ‘Lesbian and Gay F**kwits’ as the poppets are known locally) include bisexual or transgender? Who could be dropped next? Lesbians perhaps?

The ‘Pink Peak’ minority

GS — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:21:19 +0000

Increasingly, it seems to me that life may have improved for a narrow segment of the UK lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) population, but not for the majority. In some ways, for a large proportion of us things are worse now than they were 15-20 years ago.

Shopping victims

GS — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:41:34 +0000

I was looking through my high-definition video footage of the 2007 Manchester Pride parade and found this frame which seems to sums up much of what is wrong with our community today.

Queer Up North festival faces the axe after Arts Council cuts

GS — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:17:05 +0000

Queer Up North, Manchester’s gay and lesbian festival, may be forced to close after the Arts Council told organisers that its £98,000 grant is to be scrapped. The festival is one of 194 arts bodies that have been hit with severe or total funding cuts at short notice.

Save Manchester’s Lesbian and Gay Centre and community groups

GS — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 01:30:20 +0000

Just as Manchester Pride was about to start it emerged that Manchester City Council was apparently making plans to close down the Lesbian and Gay Centre.

Get Bent — Manchester’s Alternative Community Pride Summer Festival 2007

GS — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:33:54 +0000

Preparations are well underway for Get Bent. An answer to the commercialism of Manchester’s mainstream pride event.

A weekend of free events, food, music, film, art, discussion and fun! Standby for the full programme of events, coming in the next few days. Everyone is welcome (see below).

During and after Get Bent there will be video coverage here on g7uk and on the Get Bent YouTube channel.

Website | MySpace | YouTube | Facebook

Happening: Friday 24 August – Sunday 2 September 2007

Grab a flyer or graphic for your website here.

What’s the thinking behind Get Bent?

* Get Bent challenges the notion that you have to act or dress a certain way to be accepted.

* Get Bent follows a DiY ethic, creating wide variety of programming by supporting diverse people to create diverse events.

* Get Bent provides an alternative to commercial gay spaces by creating a queer autonomous space that is sex-positive without being sex-centered, doesn’t depend on alcohol to have a good time, and is unafraid to put the politics back into pride.

* Get Bent fosters a sense of community by being inclusive: all ages, all incomes, all abilities, all ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, regardless of HIV status, those who are comfortable in commercial gay spaces and those who aren’t.

* Everyone is welcome to participate in this celebration of queerness!

Community groups outraged by increase in Manchester Pride 2007 stall charges

GS — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:43:13 +0000

LGBT community groups and HIV organisations that want to have a stall at the ‘Lifestyle Expo’ at this year’s Manchester Pride have been told they will have to pay £50 for the priviledge plus £30 for electricity.

Bye bye Operation Fundraiser

GS — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:38:27 +0000

The Manchester Pride website reports that Operation Fundraiser will be ‘will be hanging up its buckets’ this year.

Manchester Pride 2007 poster — no mention of gay, lesbian, bi or transgender (video)

GS — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:07:51 +0000

The poster for Manchester Pride 2007 is out and about. But nowhere on it will you see the words ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘bi’ or ‘transgender’. The nearest you’ll get is the phrase ‘LGBT charities’.

Free wifi wireless hotspots in Manchester

GS — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:53:14 +0000

A useful map of places that offer free wifi in Manchester city centre.

There’s talk of free wireless internet across the whole of Greater Manchester by next summer. Which will be great if they can do it.

It would totally change the way that I work, that’s for sure. Though I wonder if restricting it to 256k would be a huge mistake.

Such a low speed would rule out watching almost any kind of streaming web video and everyone seems to reckon that the future of the web lies with… video.