Claremont Road Kurdish bakery

Despite the shite weather, less-than-marvellous waste disposal and occasional pissed/gouched neighbours staggering past at all hours, sometimes I love living in Moss Side. One of the best things to pop up in our neighbourhood recently is the new Kurdish bakery on Claremont Road, between the Natwest Bank on the corner with Lloyd St and the old Maine Road ground.


There are no complicated choices to make here. You walk in and give the guys at the desk the number of hot, fragrant flat breads you want (in multiples of four). One young man flips the fat balls of dough waiting on the side with his hands until they're about a foot wide and flat, then the other uses a kind of cushion to slap them onto the inside of the oven and tongs to whisk them back out, seconds later. They come out a bit like a nan bread, but lighter, and absolutely delicious. And at a pound for four, a total bargain.

Carbon Co-op - events in Moss Side

Email from friends at the Carbon Co-op:

In March 2010 The Carbon Co-op launched its Moss Side project with the Carbon Co-op
Manual offering advice on saving energy in the home. Now we’re inviting you to take the next steps by joining us for a free workshop and tour of local green projects.

*Moss Side Carbon Co-op workshop*
6pm-8pm, Tuesday 22nd June 2010
Greenheys Centre, Gt Western Street, Moss Side
How do you use electricity and gas in your home?
What simple ways are there to save energy and cuts bills?
How might local people club together to make savings cheaply and simply?

Come along to this free workshop to pick up some practical hints and tips and share
experiences with other Moss Side residents.
Arrive 5.30pm for complimentary food and refreshment

*The Big Red Bus Tour of Green Projects*
Midday-4pm, Saturday 19th June 2010
- See energy saving projects up close
- Meet people who have transformed their houses and hear how they did it
- See renewable energy projects from the top deck of a red London bus!
Departs midday from Greenheys Centre, Great Western Street, Moss Side, returns 4pm.
Complimentary food and refreshments available

Book spaces
Both events are FREE! To book a space on the workshop or the Big Red Bus tour call 0161 408 6492 or email info@carbon.coop

Find out more about the Carbon Co-op: 0161 408 6492 or www.carbon.coop

In collaboration with Great Western Street Residents Association and Peace FM.

Another reply on Palestine (pity about the literacy...) and more election communications

The free postal leaflets for Marc Ramsbottom, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Manchester Central, finally turned up yesterday (a bit late for us postal voters...). This was the biggest of the lot - an A3 size sheet of paper folder into 4 to make an A5 flier. Sadly, the concept of 'less is more' hasn't been introduced to Lib Dem designers. The example below was, unfortunately, crumpled up and put in the recycling by Beloved Husband, so it's a bit creased, but you can see what I mean:






Yesterday's other bit of election communication was the second response I've received to my second round of candidate-mithering via the Palestine Solidarity Campaign website. The first came from Marc Ramsbottom, and yesterday's came from Gayle O'Donovan, the Green Party's main hope for a council seat in Manchester, even though her chances of dislodging Tony Lloyd at Parliamentary level are about level with the survival hopes of a Louisiana seabird.
The email read as follows:

Hi Sarah,
I campaign allot on this issue with Action Palestine, the Free Gaza Boat Project and the PSC. This is a subject close to my heart and I will do whatever is within my power to fight for the rights of Palestinians.
Best Wishes
Gayle O'Donovan

Commendable sentiments, of course. Bit ropey on the literacy side of things, what with 'allot' being a verb meaning to allocate or hand out. It should, of course, be two separate words, 'a lot'. Churlish of me, I know, and I'm sure our pressurised candidates have bigger things to think about than their grammar at this point. But standards, dear boy, standards. It also doesn't specifically say whether she is signing up to the pledge which the email she's replying to asks her to support, and which the Green Party candidates for Manchester Gorton (Justine Hall) and Manchester Withington (Brian Candeland) have signed, according to the list on the PSC website.

Tony Lloyd's Big Smiley Leaflet

Well, no sign of the promised reply from Tony Lloyd on the subject of the Refugee Council asylum pledge, but this morning the postie did deliver a slightly scary leaflet featuring Mr Lloyd smiling broadly. The punctuation's a bit ropey, though. And there was only one copy, addressed to Beloved Husband. Our surnames are only a letter away from each other in the alphabet, so I'll assume that mine's on its way, rather than Labour are following the Tories' views on matrimony.

I've voted!

... in the Manchester local elections, at least - where the choice in Moss Side was between the Big 3, the Greens and an independent who I can find no policies for online and who hasn't been round canvassing, so has somewhat missed the boat. My early vote is because for some historical reason I can't remember, I have a postal ballot, and once you have one of these it seems to be automatic (isn't this one of the reasons it's potentially open to fraud? Surely I could die or emigrate and Beloved Husband, who has a rough idea of my signature, and possibly an even rougher one of my date of birth, could just keep on voting...anyway).
I'm not saying who I voted for. Suffice to say it wasn't the Tories, whose execrable leader is currently smarming his way down the airwaves at me, although the R4 callers are poking him with sharp enough sticks to stop me haring down the stairs for the Off button. He's currently trying to justify his regressive, socially conservative attempt to bribe people into matrimony.
For some bizarre reason, the Conservative Party has forked out for phone box advertising in Moss Side, which is affording me mild amusement each time I leave the house, seeing how much more of the ads have been peeled off, especially from the one by the cashpoint where I guess bored people have a bit of a rip while they're queuing.
Certain items haven't yet arrived in the post. One is my General Election ballot papers, which is fair enough; I'm not expecting them till next week. The other is the letter from Tony Lloyd, giving his position on asylum and immigration, which I was told a full week ago now had been posted.
And absolutely no reply to a SECOND shot at emailing all my candidates from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign lobbying website. The list was interesting: the PSC seems to have acquired the emails for Tony Lloyd and Suhail Rahuja (if he's bothered to clear his inbox out), but doesn't yet have contacts for 3 candidates I didn't know about - those from the Workers Revolutionary Party, the vile UKIP, and one from Socialist Equality. What the PSC site does have is a list of which candidates have signed up to their pledge - a list dominated by Greens (although NOT including Manchester Central candidate Gayle O'Donovan), with some from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Respect, small numbers from various independents and devolved national parties, and none at all from the Tories (although it does say they've had some responses from Conservatives, which implies some have had the decency to get back saying why/why not).
Finding this list, I headed to Wikipedia, where I found out some interesting and generally unpleasant additional facts about Manchester Central. Firstly, that we have the second highest unemployment of any constituency in the country. And secondly, that as well as a Socialist Labour one I hadn't previously noticed and the creepy UKIP, we have a candidate from the fucking fascist BNP scum, some lowlife called Tony Trebilock. Mr Trebilock, unsurprisingly, doesn't seem keen to divulge much about where he lives, and I can't imagine he'll be showing his face in Moss Side too much...

Tony Lloyd on refugees... perhaps

In the latest installment of the Refugee Council Election Pledge saga (Manchester Central strand) I have an email reply from Tony Lloyd's office, in response to my reminder email, saying:

Thank you for your e-mail. A reply from Tony about this issue was posted to you yesterday, you should receive it in the next few days.
Yours sincerely,
George
Office of Tony Lloyd

The email was dated Friday 16th, and the letter hasn't arrived yet. Given the standard of postal services in Moss Side that could just mean it's been delivered to any of the six houses either side of mine. I await it with bated breath...
Still nothing from Suhail Rahuja for the Tories, although maybe that's because it's taking so long to clear out his full inbox...
Not one of the candidates has replied to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign message. I don't know if that's a technical problem, or a political one.
On a wider Manchester stage, the Tory council candidate for Manchester City Centre, Yan Zhang, who was supposed to be speaking at this evening's Manchester Climate Forum meeting scrutinising what the future of Manchester city council's action on climate change might be, has pulled out. No replacement seems to have been forthcoming - perhaps because most Tories have nothing useful or sensible to say on climate change, viz:

Tackling climate change not a priority for Tory candidates
"The new generation of Conservative MPs due to take power after the election does not share David Cameron’s professed commitment to tackling climate change, a survey being published this week suggests. “Reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was rated as the lowest priority, out of 19 policies, by 144 Conservative candidates responding to the survey of the 240 most winnable Tory target seats... The results of the survey by the Conservativehome website, to be unveiled at a conference on the Tory manifesto on Wednesday, suggest a gap might be opening up between the leadership and rank-and-file MPs and activists on the issue." Financial Times, January 2010

Party leader comes to Moss Side!

One of the Major Party Leaders came to Moss Side last night. I'm not sure which one it was, and it was a very fleeting visit, but I expect, not being a marginal or the like, it'll be the nearest we get to a party bigwig (not that that bothers me much).
Hopping my pathetic crippled way up Princess Parkway at about ten thirty, my first thought when a police motorcyclist whizzed past me, lights and siren going, was that someone had shot/stabbed someone else, which is something which, happily, happens round here less often than it used to.
But when about 5 more of them turned up and started blocking the road (maybe I should have though A Coup! and got all excited) it became apparent that something else was up. Then a massive great black 4x4 with tinted windows and a sort of silver people carrier type thing, with police cars too I think, came whizzing past at something that looked well over the speed limit. And I realised that it must have been one of Them, heading back South from the 'Leaders' 'Debate' at Granada Studios. Surely it would be much more cost effective if you're doing a high-security run like that to put the precious cargo in a silver Yaris or a red Fiesta and then no potential attacker would ever be able to track the right car down, and no need for squadrons of coppers.
Needless to say I hadn't been watching the debate, having been busy in the pub catching up on office gossip at Ethical Consumer and debating whether the net effect for the environment of the aeroplane-grounding volcanic eruption was going to be good or bad.
Last time we got a 'senior politician' in Moss Side, of course, they made a total twat of themselves. The Tory shadow home secretary Chris Grayling was taken round the neighbourhood by those sweeties at Greater Manchester Police, and came out with some ridiculous comment about us being 'like The Wire.' At which some enterprising publication got a crime hack over from Baltimore to comment on how his Saturday night out with GMP, where he witnessed some kids cycling suspiciously and someone having a spliff, didn't really compare to his city, with its 350+ a year murder rate.... Grayling, you are a knob. More details here.

Manchester Central: the story continues

Well, I've had replies from the Liberal Democrat and Green Party candidates for Manchester Central, but this afternoon I got a reminder email from the Refugee Council suggesting that I might want to re-contact any candidates which had not got back, asking them to sign the pledge on racism and asylum, and if they didn't feel able to, why not.
Having received a glossy leaflet with a rather scary picture of David Cameron looking all intense and moooooooody on one side, and telling me that "Suhail is always keen to hear your concerns, either about local or national issues, and can be contacted in the following ways..." on the other.




So, I used the email on the leaflet to drop him the suggested reminder. Seconds later I got a reply! Blimey, that's quick, I thought. But it said:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yourheartland.org.uk.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
:
Mail quota exceeded.

So, not keen enough to have a flunky clear his inbox out then...
Sent the same reminder to Tony Lloyd on his shiny new gmail address too...

Spring in Moss Side

Well, spring has finally sprung, it seems, which in my little corner means the sounds kids running around playing boisterous games in the back yard at Rasta HQ, much feline cuteness lying in patches of warm sun, the magpies having lots of fun noisily winding up Tony's evil cats from up the road, and some gorgeous plum blossom (often filled with mysterious tweetings) outside my window:

Mithering Manchester Central candidates...

It's barely worth being interested in the upcoming general election if you live in Manchester Central constituency. As Beloved Husband put it, Tony Lloyd could be “like that German bloke at Liverpool Airport and he'd still get elected.”
But being an interfering type, and various campaign groups having decided to make use of web form technology to persecute parliamentary candidates, I've been helping out.
First, there was the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's lobbying tool to contact MPs asking them to sign up to pledges on issues such as a ban on settlement goods and action on the Gaza blockade. When I did this on about Thursday only Green candidate Gayle O'Donovan and Liberal Democrat Marc Ramsbottom had made email addresses available, so only they got that message from me. Tony Lloyd's parliament.uk address won't work once purdah starts, so they didn't have one for him; I sent the PSC his personal website contact address which will no doubt have pleased him immensely (he always used to be very good at replying to the various human rights, environmental and Palestine-related postcards and email forms he had off me, but I think I've become too annoying and he's given up, or he's got a new admin person who isn't as on the ball as the previous one). They didn't have one for the Tory candidate, Suhail Rahuja, either. Having gone back for another look, the PSC have apparently managed to find an email for him too, so anyone using the form now will get all four of them. I haven't had a response from the two who should have had the initial message, though.
Secondly, there is the Refugee Council's Asylum Election Pledge, asking candidates to “reject racism and xenophobia, and to remember the importance of refugee protection in debates about immigration policy.” Again, the pledge organisers didn't seem to have been able to find Mr Rahuja's email address – 'Tory candidate not interested in constituent's view shocker'? - but had the other three listed.
Encouragingly, on this one I got an emailed reply from Marc Ramsbottom before 24 hours were up, and even more encouragingly he had this to say:

Dear Sarah
Thank you for your email about the campaign by the Refugee Council.
I have signed up to support this campaign at their website and in particular support the right of asylum seekers to be able to work and support themselves and their families.
Thank you for contacting me about this issue.

So, not only responsive but talking some much-needed sense on the subject, something rare in the generally racist, alarmist and repugnant political discourse on asylum in this country. So, one up to Mr Ramsbottom (although I believe OA may have less positive things to say about Manchester Lib Dems' new manifesto position on climate change in an upcoming issue of Manchester Climate Fortnightly. And I will be posting any more replies I get...

Be Very Afraid, and some updates...

Firstly, thanks to OA again for striking fear into my heart when I opened my email to this excerpt from a Financial Times book review:

The most shocking tales are about Sarah Palin, who last week took up a new role as a Fox News commentator, and whose recent book, Going Rogue, is selling in the millions. So uninformed was McCain's running mate that advisors had to give her junior school tutorials on the first and second world wars, Vietnam and the cold war. Palin insisted that Saddam Hussein launched the September 11 attacks. As the depth of her ignorance sunk in, as well as her total lack of interest in rectifying it, McCain's senior staff members were “ridden with guilt over elevating Palin to within striking distance of the White House.

And a couple of updates.

First, wahey! My boiler scrappage scheme voucher has arrived, and as I type the cats are cowering in the bedroom as the rest of the house descends in to a chaotic mess of disconnected pipes, lifted floorboards and men in boiler suits wielding bits of machinery. But that doesn't mean I'm retracting any of my comments on the equally chaotic implementation of the scheme, which I put down to the EST's political masters trying to create a bit of a warm (literally) fuzzy feeling before the electioneering really gets going.

The second one is a corker. Remember Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling declaring that Moss Side was like the Wire? A couple of journalists - a freelancer from Manchester and a crime reporter from the Baltimore Sun - decided to swap cities and see if he was right. So Baltimore blokey, from a city with several hundred murders a year, gets to spend a night with GMP in sunny Moss Side. Simon Binns reported the result in Crains:

Justin Fenton, the Baltimore Sun crime reporter, spent a week on a job swap with Northern Independent hack Mark Hughes in order to see if Moss Side really was like hit TV show The Wire, a recent claim made by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling. Fenton was positively disappointed at the lack of excitement, however, after 14 hours with Greater Manchester Police. “The lack of action on my ridealongs has been quite ridiculous, especially since the press and the officers I rode around with in Manchester insist that these are tough streets,” he said. “Here's what I witnessed first-hand: a car full of teens who had just finished smoking marijuana; a kid whose furious bike riding raised suspicions but turned out to be nothing.” Furious bike riding is a suspicious activity now? Good news for Manchester's public image, though, and proof that cycling really has taken off since the Velodrome and Sir Chris Hoy's Olympic success.

Redwood and barmy things

John Redwood declared on his blog this week that "We will benefit from the better weather for tourism, agriculture and outdoor sports." This, of course, is his in-depth analysis of the impacts of climate change. Genius. This of course happily balances out massive species loss, widespread loss of human life, resource wars - and something that Mr Redwood should really be worried about, given his views on non-Vulcans being allowed to reside in the UK, mass migration.
Another reminder of why the Tories must never be voted for, like we needed any more.
And on a migration tangent - I love Moss Side. I love it's mixedness. Especially when it throws up multicultural wonders like Donner in a Barm. No I won't be eating that (ever), but I'm glad it exists...

Urban Research, urban refurb, urban renewal

So, interesting (maybe, to someone out there) bits and bobs going on around my corner of South Manchester at the moment...

Went to the Urban Research Collective launch at Zion Arts on Wednesday. A very interesting new CIC which aims to try and drag left-wing researchers like muggins kicking and screaming into the activist arena - whether via its own projects or letting other people use it as a fundraising vehicle or networking tool. I love researching, and I'm much more comfortable producing stuff that other people can then go and do things with. But I'm looking forward to working with these guys and being prodded out of my comfort zone.



My office at Openspace is currently a building site - hence the pictures. But it will give our tenant-managed workspace co-op more room to rent out and a meeting room. Images nicked from my colleague Jonathan Atkinson. I'm not sure why Polyp seems to be doing Bill & Ben imitations in the second one... oh, and we got a plug from Ed Mayo the other day, so the marketing team should be happy.

The genius Marc Roberts and my lovely husband have their cartoon masterpiece, the Great Climate Slamdown, on the New Internationalist website. Will Copenhagen bring us a settlement on climate change which will save the world? Will it fuck. Will trogging off there to run around being chased by riot police achieve much beyond some nice activist bonding experiences? I refer you to my previous comment. Ho hum. Hopefully certain of my friends won't notice that and hate me for it...

Information seems to be slowly spilling out of the Council about the proposed regeneration of the area of Moss Side adjacent to the doomed bus (formerly tram) station on Princess Parkway and Claremont Rd to the south and north respectively, and between Princess Parkway and my allotment patch on Caythorpe St to the east and west. At one time it looked like everybody was getting compulsory purchased and shifted out for a major demolition job, but I think the recession had squished that plan (to the annoyance of at least one friend living in the middle of a semi-derelict street, as the housing associations with properties round there moved their tenants out months or even years ago, creating at least the beginnings of a wasteland of rats, rubbish and temporary druggie squats). Instead many of the old 2-bed Victorian terraced houses will be knocked through to create homes more in keeping with the needs of Moss Side's families. Sadly, though, Bishop Bilsborough Primary School is still in the path of the bulldozers, despite being recently squatted for an alternative arts festival. It's a lovely building and could have been a great location for some kind of community centre (something we're a bit short of in Moss Side if you don't count various religious buildings and the hideous Powerhouse, although there's still the West Indian centre).

Oh, and with marketing ahoy on the Gaza book, I've also finally finished the bloody Leila Khaled biography. A considerable relief, to say the least, and I'm looking forward to slowly re-emerging into the sunlight (just in time for it to disappear beneath a wintry horizon) and start attempting to re-engage with my social life. I'm sure I had one, once. The post-book holiday in Brighton, while pleasant, wasn't the relaxing experience it was meant to be - it seemed to involved inordinate amounts of work and the idea for Book Number Three popped into my head, almost fully-formed. But that's as much as I'm saying about that - if I let the idea out of my head before it's all written down properly it might go all liquidy and spill out of my ears or something. So watch this space.

More Moss Side wildlife

(No Mr Grayling that's not a euphemism, you tosser).
Not content with delivering up a lovely bat flickering around 'midst the streetlights and terraces, Moss Side's quota of interesting wildlife has gone up yet again. Hulme, with its threatened (thanks to MMU) green spaces may get goldfinches and redwings and all sorts of interesting bird life, but Moss Side is usually a bit of a desert on that front. Crows, magpies (hissssss...), scraggy pigeons, black-headed gulls, starlings and the occasional satanic little cute fluffy bluetit shredding my mint and baby lettuces.
But not once but twice in the last week, a Greater Spotted Woodpecker - a quite substantial and very handsome black and white bird with red highlights - has turned up to have a very comprehensive-looking working through of ever possible insect-bearing nook and cranny of the tree 3 yards down. Miraculously, none of the vast tribe of local cats has got it yet. That makes me happy (in a somewhat shite week).

Moss Side +/-

A bat just flew past my front window. In Moss Side. How cool is that? Never seen one round here before (except in Alexandra Park where there are big trees and the derelict Victorian mansion to roost in, and the lake to attract insects). Fingers crossed it's planning to be a local bat.
Of course, it might get frightened off by Tory descriptions of the neighbourhood. If it's stupid enough to believe anything a white upperclass Tory male has to say about anything other than moats and duckponds.
Less positive encounter today: the nasty little man at the bus stop this morning, complaining about how the Council was trying to stop the English Defence League - yet another bunch of horrible fascists trying to appropriate other people's identities as justification for their own revolting views/personal inadequacies - from marching in Manchester on October 10th. Apparently, according to my vile neighbour, it's England V Russia that day so no club matches to keep nice patriotic footie fans from turning out for a fight with the police. Great. A counter-demo on crutches, that'll be fun.

Moss Side graffiti