A Walk around Salford Quays 24/08/08

A Walk around Salford Quays 24/08/08

With its new canalside docks, the city of Salford, a prominent site of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, was destined to grow rapidly. In 1896, Trafford Park Industrial Estate was opened for the manufacture and export of textiles and machinery and the whole area boomed. At its mid-20th century peak, Trafford Park employed 75,000 workers. Salford veterans recall thousands upon thousands of men and women streaming into its factories every day. Salford had experienced a major increase in population, from 7,000 to 220,000 by the early years of the 20th century, but even amid enormous wealth creation and with a massive labour force in work, social and economic conditions were often appalling.

In common with the area’s other traditional industries such as engineering and steel-making, Salford’s docks suffered terrible decline at the end of the 1960s. The advent of containerisation, shifts in trade patterns and the increase in the size of ships all affected Salford badly. The glory days were over and worsening economic conditions, precipitated by the oil crisis of 1973 and subsequent industrial unrest in Britain, speeded up the rate of decline. By the late 1970s, the loss of trade and jobs in the north of England was alarming and the once-proud docks of inner Salford, by now squalid and polluted, qualified to receive derelict land funding under the British Government’s Urban Programme.

Salford docks closed forever in 1982. Jobs at Trafford Park nose-dived towards an all-time low of 24,500 by 1985, as unemployment in the north-west soared above 30 per cent in some places. Salford City Council chief executive John Willis, who had joined the council in 1966, recalled how bad things were at the time: “All the traditional industries were shutting and we faced this urban wasteland right in the middle of the city. Unlike Liverpool or London, the docks didn’t have good warehouse buildings that could in time be renovated. They were rotting wooden grain stores. The challenge was what to do with the docks and the Council took the view that it had to do something. And that meant partnership with the private sector.”

The City Council had already been brave in selling off Salford’s worst tenement blocks to private housebuilders for nominal sums to redevelop as owner-occupier flats. Now it persuaded the Department of the Environment to allow it to purchase the docks and engage private entrepreneurs and developers in a phased programme of dockland regeneration. In late 1983 it acquired the majority of the docks (about 90 hectares) from the Manchester Ship Canal Company for a reputed  £1.5 million. It then reached agreement with private developer Ted Hagen’s Urban Waterside company to transfer land around Dock 6 to its ownership on condition that at least £4.5 million of private sector development be secured. Meanwhile, derelict land funding from the Urban Programme enabled work to start on reclamation as well as new services, landscaping and roads.

Hagen’s vision was for a cinema and hotel to occupy the site. Salford was about to begin the long march back from the brink. “At the City Council, we had sleepless nights over the guarantees we had to give but they were never called on,” said Willis. “Investment from the Government’s Urban Programme, from the European Regional Fund and our own budget meant we were eventually able to start sorting out the infrastructure.”

Extracts from Making the Lowry, Jeremy Myerson, Lowry Press, 2000

Support was received from The National Lottery, through The Arts Council of England, The Millennium Commission, and Heritage Lottery Fund. Other funders include the European Regional Development Fund, English Partnerships, Salford City Council, Trafford Park Development Corporation and the private sector.

The total cost of the project was  £106 million. The project includes The Lowry building, the large Plaza, the terraced areas down to the canal and the Lifting Footbridge leading to Trafford Wharfside and the Imperial War Museum North. Also included in The Lowry project is the Digital World Centre (DWC) – a high-tech business centre providing quality, serviced premises. It will be home to the Digital World Society (DWS), a new think tank that will generate innovative projects in digital technologies.

All Photos taken by Tricia

The first four are at the University of Salford

Gotta Jazz – Count Basic – The K&D Sessions

 

The Tombots – 1522

The Tombots

live at Trinity Church Salford. 

Sounds from the other City

Song – 1522

3rd May 2009

Flimed by Tony
Edited by Tricia

Media City UK

 

mediacity:UK is a property development based on the media industry, located in Salford Quays, in Salford, England. mediacity:uk is being developed by a partnership of the Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company, Peel Holdings and Salford City Council. Key advisor on the development of media cities worldwide is Michael Joroff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who also advises on the development of Digital Media City Seoul, South Korea, and Digital Mile in Zaragoza, Spain. mediacity:uk is supported by Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council. The main tenant upon initial completion will be the BBC, though other media related companies, including ITV, are expected to join them.

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day

Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women’s craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more.

Many global corporations have also started to more actively support IWD by running their own internal events and through supporting external ones. For example, on 8 March search engine and media giant Google some years even changes its logo on its global search pages. Year on year IWD is certainly increasing in status. The United States even designates the whole month of March as ‘Women’s History Month’.

So make a difference, think globally and act locally !! Make everyday International Women’s Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Paul Scoble
Kings Arms
Salford
30 November 2008

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin’ for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D. A.
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t try “No Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin’ to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Look out kid
You’re gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin’ for a new fool
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don’t wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don’t work
‘Cause the vandals took the handles.

Spiders & The Moon

Who took a bite out of the moon?

Lavern Baker – Soul On Fire.

The Moon, of course, has been known since prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. As the Moon orbits around the Earth once per month, the angle between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun changes; we see this as the cycle of the Moon’s phases. The time between successive new moons is 29.5 days (709 hours), slightly different from the Moon’s orbital period (measured against the stars) since the Earth moves a significant distance in its orbit around the Sun in that time.

The European House Spider is often called a drain spider because when one falls into a sink or bath tub and cannot climb the smooth sides, people assume it come up through the drain. This spider belongs to the family Agelenidae (the funnel web spiders).

This is a medium sized brown spider with proportionately long legs. Females are up to 11.5 mm in body length and males are up to 9 mm. The legs are banded with lighter browns and the abdomen is marked with a grey chevron pattern. Adult males can be identified by the swollen club-like tips to the pedipalps (short leg-like structures at the front of the head between the legs and the fangs).
This species can be found indoors all year round. They are more frequently found in the autumn when they come inside to escape the colder weather.

This male spider had it leg chewed off by my pussy, Kitty, It ran away with only seven legs…. But it grew another leg!! You can see it 1:32 & 1:48.. I take a photo of it every time I see it… but i’ve not seen it for a couple of day.. how long do they live???

All photos taken by Tricia

Run away!!!!! BANG!!!!!!

Guy Fawkes:
Born on 13 April 1570 at High Petergate in York, Yorkshire, Fawkes was the only son of Edward Fawkes and Edith Blake. His mother had given birth to a daughter a few years earlier, named Anne, who died seven weeks later on 11 November 1568. Guy was baptised in the church of St. Michael le Belfrey on 16 April 1570 as a three-day-old baby. In the five years following Fawkes’s birth, his mother also bore two more daughters, Anne (named in honour of the earlier deceased child) and Elizabeth.
He attended St. Peter’s School in York, where his schoolfellows may have included John and Christopher Wright, both of whom would be among the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, and Thomas Morton, who became Bishop of Durham. During Fawkes’s time at St. Peter’s he was under the tutelage of John Pulleyn, kinsman to the Pulleyns of Scotton and a suspected Catholic who, according to some sources, may have had an early effect on the impressionable Fawkes.

Fawkes is notorious for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was probably placed in charge of executing the plot because of his military and explosives experience. The plot, masterminded by Robert Catesby, was an attempt by a group of religious conspirators to kill King James I of England, his family, and most of the aristocracy by blowing up the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster during the State Opening of Parliament. Fawkes may have been introduced to Catesby by Hugh Owen, a man who was in the pay of the Spanish Netherlands. Sir William Stanley is also believed to have recommended him, and Fawkes named him under torture, leading to his arrest and imprisonment for a day after the discovery of the plot. It was Stanley who first presented Fawkes to Thomas Winter in 1603 when Winter was in Continental Europe. Stanley was the commander of the English in Flanders at the time. Stanley had handed Deventer and much of its garrison back to the Spanish in 1587, nearly wiping out the gains that the Earl of Leicester had made in the Low Countries. Leicesters expedition was widely regarded as a disaster, for this reason among others.

The best primary source for the details of the plot itself is the account known as the King’s Book or James I The Kings Book – A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors. Robt. Barker, Printer to the Kings Most Excellent Majesty, British Museum 1606. Although this is a government account, and details have been disputed, it is generally considered to be an accurate record of the history of the plot, and the imprisonment, torture and execution of the plotters.

When they asked for his name Fawkes replied “John Johnson”. He was tortured over the next few days. King James directed that the torture be light at first, but more severe if necessary. Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower of London at this time, supervised the torture and obtained Fawkes’s confession. For three or four days Fawkes said nothing, nor divulged the names of his co-conspirators. Only when he found out that they had proclaimed themselves by appearing in arms did he succumb. The torture only revealed the names of those conspirators who were already dead or whose names were known to the authorities. Some had fled to Dunchurch, Warwickshire, where they were killed or captured. On 31 January, Fawkes and a number of others implicated in the conspiracy were tried in Westminster Hall. After being found guilty, they were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster and St Paul’s Yard, where they were hanged, drawn and quartered

A common phrase is that Fawkes was “the only man to ever enter Parliament with honest intentions”. This phrase may have originated in a 19th-century pantomime, and was commonly seen on anarchist posters during the early 20th century. The Scottish Socialist Party became embroiled in controversy when they resurrected the poster with humorous intent in 2003.

Bonfire Night Fountain
Music – Eastwest (stoned together) Mama Oliver
The K&D session

Filmed by Tony
Edited by Tricia

Run away!!!!! BANG!!!!!!
3/11/07