IF Mr. Robert Rose, who calls himself “the bard of colour,” would have taken repeated hints, we should not now have had occasion to request him plainly, as we now do, to cease writing to us, or to any member of our establishment. We have no intention of noticing his book, and do not desire any communication with him.

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An exclusive 10-minute video showing the disorder and looting of shops in the Piccadilly area on Tuesday evening and the police response.

“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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A decade ago, Julia Grant was one of the best-known business owners in Manchester’s gay village and an outspoken voice in both the LGBT and mainstream media.

After Mardi Gras 1999 raised nothing at all for good causes, she ran the successful and free-to-enter GayFest for two years. But, some people — including local councillors and Manchester City Council — weren’t happy at all.

Unexpectedly, in 2002, Julia sold Hollywood Showbar and her other businesses and left. Despite rumours and malicious gossip since then, she didn’t speak out in public.

Now, in this exclusive interview Julia Grant reveals the LGBT history that you won’t see at the current Manchester Pride exhibition at The Lowry gallery. Plus she recalls the events that drove her out of the city.

This was recorded on 10 July 2011 during the Sparkle weekend.

Note: eventually, when time allows, archive photos, video and other media will be added to this interview.

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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Manchester’s 6th annual World Naked Bike Ride took place on Friday 3 June 2011 at 7pm. Here’s my exclusive video of it.

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

The newly-added archive covers The Guardian from 1821-2003 and The Observer from 1791-2003. The years from 2003 to date can be seen via the existing NewsBank service.

So, in a nutshell you can see any page from any issue and it’s free.

This is an amazing resource to have at our fingertips. Particularly as the newspaper was known as The Manchester Guardian until the late 1960′s and was based in offices on Cross Street where Boots is now. So there is a wealth of historical information about the city.

The Times is also available from 1785 to the current date and The Newsbank service provides issues of many newspapers from Britain and around the world, from the last 10-25 years. Including the Manchester Evening News, The Independent, Daily Telegraph, the Mirror…

There are many other free resources in the 24 Hour Library including reference services and the Naxos Music Library which provides 18,000 CDs to listen to.

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.

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