Manchester Pride misleads again — in its latest accounts

Thursday 11 August 2016

Manchester Pride’s accounts for year ending 2015 state that 43,000 tickets sold that year was the highest number ever.

In fact the Community Report issued by Mardi Gras in 1999 states that sales in 1998 were 51,000 and 45,000 in 1999.

Pride’s own 2009 accounts state that attendance was “over” 42,000 that year. The accounts for the following year, 2010, say there was a 6% increase in ticket sales that year.

42,000 x 6% = 2,520

Total 44,520.

Three years in which ticket sales were higher than the 43,000 in 2015…

Manchester Pride hasn’t responded to an email about this. When will Pride be held to account for misleading the public repeatedly?

 

Thinking of buying a Manchester Pride 2016 wristband? Some very important information…

Thursday 18 February 2016

The streets of the gay village will be open to everyone during Manchester Pride this year, whether they pay or not, and we think Sackville Park will be too.

This is because Manchester Pride has acted unlawfully since 2003 in closing the streets to pedestrians who didn’t pay. In fact, blocking members of the public who were on foot was probably a criminal offence. Manchester City Council had unlawfully included pedestrians in its traffic order for the event and last year they had to rewrite it to remove this. (more…)

 

Staggering figures for reported violent and sexual crimes in Manchester’s gay village in Nov 2015

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Reported violent and sexual crimes in Manchester's gay village in November 2015

These are probably the highest ever since the police crime maps were introduced in December 2010.

Where are the news stories?

Where are the protests? Yet always plenty of finger pointing overseas…

How many crimes aren’t reported or recorded by the police?

What is being done? Nothing!

See the crime maps here.

 

How to record each side of a Skype interview onto a separate channel

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Here’s how you can produce a recording of a Skype interview that has the voice of one person only on the left channel and the other person only on the right. This gives you maximum flexibility when it comes to post production editing.

Behringer mixer

I use a little Behringher Xenyx 802 mixer for this. These cost around £45. I’ve had two of them for many years now.

Start by plugging a microphone into Channel One on the mixer. Here I’m using a condenser mic. Use the Pan control to direct this channel completely to the left.

Behringer mixer

Connect the FX Send Output of the mixer to the Line In (or possibly the Mic) socket of your PC. This feed takes your voice to the person you’re interviewing.

Connect the Headphone (or Line Out) socket of your PC to another input channel on the mixer. In the photo I have it going into Channel Three. This brings the other side of the Skype conversation (the remote person) into the mixer. Pan this completely to the right.

Connect the output of the mixer to a stereo audio recorder. Here I’m using an Olympus LS12.

Behringer mixer

Fade up FX Send on Channel One when you want the person at the other end to hear your microphone.

I recommend that you both wear headphones.

The usual purpose of the FX Send knob on each channel is to feed selected audio out to an external effects unit and then bring it back into the mixer via the Stereo Aux Return sockets. For example to add echo. But here we use it as a convenient way to isolate sound from the microphone.

We can’t just send the general output of the mixer to the other person because they would hear themselves as well as the mic and there would likely be a slight delay over the internet.

Behringer mixer

When the interview is over, open the audio file in your favourite editor. I use Sony Vegas. Here I’ve opened two copies of the file and switched one to play the left channel and the other the right. You’ll find that the two sides of the conversation are completely separate.

Now you can mix the two sides however you wish. Tweak the volume of either voice and even make slight adjustments to the timing of questions and answers by moving sections on the timeline.

For example if the interviewee has a habit of talking over the end of your questions you can delay their response until the question is complete. Or if you want to remove a question completely the beginning of their answer is “clean.”

 

Why Manchester’s gay village must be consigned to history

Tuesday 10 June 2014

We still need safe LGBT spaces. But the future lies in decentralising the LGBT community in Manchester. We must reduce the power of a controlling elite that has us by the throat.

There may have been some good intentions behind the setting up of a “gay village” area more than 20 years ago, but now it’s time for all of us to acknowledge what a horrible and perverse thing it’s become.

It’s time to dismantle the gay village and spread our businesses, organisations, ourselves and our pink pounds across the city once again. The way things were quarter of a century ago…

Unfortunately, idealistic ideas about having our own area were exploited by marketeers, politicians, unscrupulous business types, events organisers and even charities. Now it’s time to show them who’s the boss: the consumer. (more…)

 
 

Canal Street in the 1880s: Ginger Liz, Cockney Jim and Dirty Alf

Friday 15 November 2013

In the 1880s the Manchester Evening News published a series of articles which were then gathered together in a book called “Criminal Manchester.” One chapter is “Canal Street: Ginger Liz and Cockney Alf.”

You can download a PDF of the whole book here, courtesy of Chetham’s Library.

And here’s Chapter X about Canal Street:

CRIMINAL MANCHESTER

EXPERIENCES OF A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Reprinted from the Manchester Evening News

CHAPTER X.

CANAL-STREET : GINGER LIZ AND COCKNEY JIM.

I have described the life that hides itself in Charter-street, Deansgate, and Gaythorn, and in this, my concluding article, I shall cover the remaining ground that can properly be dealt with, though it is scarcely so prolific as the districts that have already been under notice.

Its area is much wider, however, though its special criminality is decidedly of an inferior order, and is so scattered that it loses much of the dangerous character which is developed when its component parts are comprehensively grouped together. It has many features peculiarly its own, and as it consists of three detached localities, these features are pretty distinctly marked in each. The districts are Canal-street, Ancoats, and London-road. (more…)