A fascinating book has been published about the city beneath the streets of Manchester. Underground Manchester, by local historian Keith Warrender, tells of the 18,000 people who lived in city centre cellars during Victorian times, and a subterranean shooting gallery and bowling alley, as well as the numerous Cold War bunkers that have long been talked about.
I had a flick through the book when I was writing the story for the MEN and the pictures are great…may even get a copy myself.

Imagine what you would do if one of your loved-ones walked out of the house one day and never came back. It’s unthinkable, isn’t it.
But thousands of British families go through exactly that every single year. And while most people that go missing are teenagers, many are adults with partners, children of their own and perhaps grandchildren.
The recent coverage of the reappearance of canoe – or kayak – man John Darwin probably brought it all back for many of these families. Darwin and his wife Anne appear to have staged his death to cash in on life insurance policies.
But for the vast majority of the disappeared, financial gain is unlikely to come into it. Depression, debt and family breakdown are more common triggers.
It’s incredible how the people left behind can continue to function normally when this happens. Not knowing what’s happened and being unable to grieve is, they say, far worse than knowing someone’s dead and having a grave to visit.

Manchester’s Electric Chair club night is coming to an end this weekend after almost 13 years of great music.
Everyone raves about the Hacienda when they talk about electronic music from this city. I was a few years too young to make it to the Hac but I find it hard to believe the hype surrounding that club.
Maybe I’m biased but I think that in its own way Electric Chair may have done almost as much to put Manchester on the map, and with no gang problems or shootings along the way.
I had a brief previous incarnation as a music journalist and I find it difficult to think of a more consistent or credible night.
I’ll be sorry to see it go but 13 years is way too long for anything in a creative, dynamic industry.

I have written a comment piece over here, at Liverpool Confidential, about the start of the second public inquiry into the city’s Edge Lane West development.
The hearing which started today – and could run for six weeks and cost the taxpayer millions – will look at plans to clear 400 homes in the Kensington area of the city, to make way for improvements to the road that leads off the M62. Newly built homes would then be built in their place, financed by the Housing Market Renewal Fund.
It’s hugely complicated and there are strong feelings on either side.

I’ve got a story in today’s Media Guardian – and a variation into the Manchester Evening News – about Hayden Black, a local boy who’s making it big in internet comedy and could now be picked up for television.
Many thanks to Craig McGinty for the tip.

It’s funny how stories seem to go in phases.
The will-it-won’t-it saga of Afflecks Palace is not something I’d managed to get anywhere with for a while when I heard about the closure of Leeds Corn Exchange. I wrote the feature below, which was published in the Big Issue today, over the Christmas break.
After I filed it, and after it had been sent to the printer last week, the Afflecks saga flared up again. If you believe some people it could be closed within a fortnight. Yet speak to others and they are adamant that nothing of the sort is going on. Who knows, but it’s a coincidence (I admit, an extremely uninteresting one to anyone except me) that the two stories – Leeds and Manchester – have converged in this way.
This is something I’ve noticed several times before – I will often have a few weeks at a time when I’m writing mainly on a particular subject, be it regeneration, asylum or whatever. Pretty dull observation I know, but hey this is the kind of thing that my pedantic little mind likes to focus on. Anything but that news story that I’m still trying to write at this hour of the day (10.50pm).

I’ve written my first blog piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free site today, looking at the loss of individuality in the UK’s town and city centres. Feel free to drop by and add your thoughts to the debate,

A proper feature on the subject – focusing particularly on the imminent closure of Leeds Corn Exchange – will be published in Monday’s Big Issue.

For a profoundly depressing picture of life for someone who bought a cheap property in inner-city Salford, look no further than an article in today’s Guardian G2 supplement.

Writer Ed Jones bought a bargain terrace a couple of years ago in a part of the city which is currently “benefiting” from millions of pounds of Housing Market Renewal cash. It may – or may not be – Langworthy which from the description appears to fit the bill.
When Jones found a Slovakian lodger and a Polish girlfriend his problems with the local youths – and adults – took a sinister turn, with threats, break-ins, insults and attacks on his car.
Then the local hard man pays him a visit, while wearing a balaclava.

“He takes it off and makes a speech about how I ‘don’t come from round here’…He kicks me and bellows: ‘This is it, right? You’ve got two weeks to get them fucking Polish out the house or I’m gonna burn it down! Get it?’
As I stand there bleeding, he points at me and says, ‘You’re not bleeding’ and launches into a tirade about how ‘these Polish’ are ‘coming here and taking over’. Turning to go, he points back at me and says, ‘I’m serious about them Polish – get them out!'”

Jones does what many in his desperate situation would do. He contacts his MP. (*I am trying not to chuckle, for it is she who never misses a photo opportunity but – according to many of her constituents – rarely answers their complaints.*)

“It is around this time that I hear from a disillusioned police officer that Hazel Blears, MP for the area, has recently been at the top of our street with a police inspector having her photograph taken, claiming that the fight against antisocial behaviour in the area has been a success story. It all adds to the profound sense of dereliction.
“When I ask Blears to comment for this article, she says she’s very busy but will get back to me. I’ve heard nothing more from her.”

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good thing that public money is being put into urban wastelands like the one that Jones moved into – and has now moved out of. But I think the moral of his story is that it takes more than some new flats, fences and guttering to sort out an area that has been neglected for so long.
The youngsters in his story don’t appear to have been in school during the day – they stand around in the street, drinking, smoking weed and generally getting up to no good. Almost every household contains someone who lives with mental illness. Unemployment and poverty are rife.

While Hazel Blears poses for self-congratulatory photographs and boasts about the drop in anti-social behaviour, the residents who put up with the daily vandalism and abuse have all but given up reporting it to the police – partly because they are too hard-pressed to respond, and partly out of fear of the yobs.
It is of course possible that Blears, her pet police inspector and perhaps even the city council genuinely don’t appreciate the seriousness of the problem. How could they, if they aren’t the ones putting up with this kind of shit day in, day out.

It will be interesting to see how all this pans out when the BBC’s Media City opens just a mile away at Salford Quays in a couple of years’ time.
How will all the well-paid staff who the city’s trying to entice to landmark developments like Urban Splash’s upside down houses cope with the kind of thing Jones faced?
I can’t see how educated, wealthy media types are going to get a more positive reaction from the bored, bitter lost youths from marginal areas like Langworthy (using that as an example).

I am in no way writing off people from Salford as narrow-minded or mean-spirited: the vast majority of people I’ve come across in my work there have been salt-of-the earth working class people. But there, like in many other deprived areas of Greater Manchester and beyond, there is also a young underclass who have no education, no aspiration, a bad attitude and serious victim mentality.
Until this can be tackled, no amount of tinkering is going to entice outsiders to stay and a sustainable community to take root.

UPDATE 18/1/08
I just found out that Ed Jones actually moved to Broughton. My apologies to Langworthy.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas (or Winterval?) and New Year. I did and my brain is now (slowly) creaking back into action after far too much time off work. The only useful thing I did during the break was a couple days volunteering at Manchester’s homeless drop-in project, Lifeshare, which was illuminating, as always.
I have big plans for this year including – fingers crossed – some overseas work. For the time being however I am a bit bogged down with deadlines but thought I’d post one of my favourite news stories from 2007. It is worth a quick read…(click on image):

Talking of homelessness, the controversy surrounding the government’s dubious counting methods rumbles on in this week’s Big Issue in the North. I have previously highlighted it here and here.

A gang has been jailed after smuggling £1.5m-worth of pure heroin into the UK, sewn into Pakistani dresses.
They mixed the drug with paracetamol to maximise profits – and turned it back into solid blocks to make it appear pure.
There was so much heroin dust in the house where they did this that it took an industrial cleaning company two days to clean up.
Unfortunately for them – and fortunately for Oldham, because heroin is one of the most revolting drugs there is – this gang weren’t actually that bright.
One made a little video diary on his phone (which was recovered by police and used in evidence), showing them buying the heroin, stitching it into the salwar kameez, posting it to Britain and boasting about what they had done.
I nearly laughed out loud in court when I heard what one of them told police. When asked about all the heroin dust he claimed he thought the others were baking cakes and the powder was flour.