GB's top team sold to highest bidder

All over the world cyclists out training are shouting at their mates: “Slow down! What do you think I am – a Mancunian!”
Manchester has become to track cycling what Kenya is to distance running.
The spiritual home. The setter of standards.
The cycling world cup gave GB’s phenomenally successful Olympic team the chance to show off their skills in their home velodrome.
Next to Asda, in Manchester’s Sports City.
The medallists were competing together but they weren’t Great Britain. They were team Sky HD.
When they won – which they usually did – God Save The Queen was played.
Surely it should have been the theme from The Simpsons.
Flags and patriotism could have turned the event into a sporting Nuremburg rally.
But thankfully cycling fans don’t sing the national anthem. They must be bored with it.
And when the Germans won the 40km tag race – called, confusingly, the madison – their flag was treated with as much respect as it used to be when Uwe Rosler played for Manchester City.
The music was good. Nena’s cold war anthem 99 Red Balloons greeting that German victory.
The Skids’ The Saints are Coming, Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up, The Vapours Turning Japanese, and the Speedy Gonzales music backed some of the heats in the keiran
That’s the race where a man on a little moped leads the bikes round for three laps before they fly past him and race to the finsh.
It’s exciting – but it’s contrived.
And that’s the problem with track cycling. Many races are a bit too complicated.
This was a great three-day event. Sold out with a friendly atmosphere.
But world beating athletes, pulling in new crowds, need a world championship standard tannoy to explain what’s going on. Not a bloke who sounds like he’s shouting across a field on a windy day.
UCI Cycling World Cup Classics, Manchester Velodrome, Stuart Street. Weekend ticket £35.

Cromwell signs up for civil liberties

In 1825 the most famous of all home secretaries issued a call for information to help catch a group of wanted criminals.
Robert Peel – founder of the police - offered a £100 reward for each conviction secured.
The full force of the state had been unleashed on a group of seafarers from Sunderland who dared to demonstrate for better pay and conditions.
A copy’s of Peel’s proclamation – designed to be posted on Weirside – is part of a thought-provoking new exhibition at the British Library.
Taking Liberties tells of a 900 year struggle for human rights in Britain.
The actual Magna Carta starts the show.
And we see other ancient documents like the Laws of the Forest.
Democracy campaigner Oliver Cromwell’s signature is clear to see on the death warrant of Charles I – along with 58 others as they spread the blame.
There’s a drawing of an Irish Home Rule protest from 1893 with a banner reading “Let Tories Quake”, and video from the 1990s depicting devolution in Scotland and Wales.
Visitors are given a wrist-band with a bar code which enables them to use interactive displays and vote on constitutional questions like the future of democracy.
"Citzen 148250 logged in" says the chilling Orwellian acknowledgment.
The message of this exhibition is that people have died for our rights – so we should use them.
The last wall carries a Thomas Paine quote from 1771: “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
Taking Liberties: The struggle for Britain’s Freedoms and Rights is at The British Library, Euston Road, London, from October 31 2008 to March 1 2009. Opening hours 9.30am to 6pm, admission is free.

The history of the photo opportunity

A hundred years ago loyalist photographers in Northern Ireland took pictures at a well-appointed UVF hospital.
The message was clear. We are ready for a bloody struggle against home rule.
So begins both this excellent photographic exhibition and the century of spin it documents.
It turns out that Shackelton - the polar explorer - was a Beckhamesque self-publicist who financed his trips to the frozen wastes with product placement.
Here he is, pictured, sitting on a big baked beans tin in the Antarctic, feeding Golden Syrup to penguins, and dressed head-to-toe in Burberry in 1910.
Using examples from Northern Ireland, the UK, and the United States, viewers are taken through the history of the PR picture.
Al Jolson supporting Coolidge, the United Fruit Company exaggerating communist influence in Guatemala, and an elephant signing a Hollywood contract.
By 1939 the image was enough to create the story on its own.
The American radio host who took a bull into a china shop, and hid a needle in a haystack was the master.
Throughout The Troubles all sides exploited the photo opportunity in the battle for hearts and minds.
The most chilling picture is from 1970. It shows two little boys who won a Belfast Telegraph competition to go on patrol in the city with the British army.
There they are - with two real squaddies - in their replica unifroms and carrying replica guns.
Like African boy soldiers on the streets of Britain. Collateral damage in a propaganda war.
A Century of Spin is at the Belfast Exposed gallery, Donegall Street, until November 28. Admission is free.

Personal, political, plenty of punch lines

Mid-life crises came mob-handed at comic Mark Steel.
Suddenly young people spoke another language, his own children needed constant looking after, his relationship with their mother collapsed, and his thirty year affair with the Socialist Workers Party ended in tears.
Like all good artists Steel used adversity for inspiration – turning his troubles into a book and a stand-up routine.
At Salford’s Lowry Centre on Sunday night he hit just the right note for an audience who – like him – were too old to rap but too young to lose the will to live just yet.
Steel’s highly personal show touched on everything from being banished to the sofa to his love of Test Match Special.
His impersonations of figures from Tony Benn, through Geoffrey Boycott, to a forgetful Ian Paisley were funny and well observed caricatures.
Probably the weakest part of the show was when Steel talked of his disenchantment with the disorganised organised left.
It will have confused the non-activists in the crowd.
And he didn’t have the heart to really go for his former comrades.
Many of the key players behind last month’s Convention of the Left were in the audience – no doubt desperate to read the nuances.
They will probably have liked the way his skit on the soul-destroying number of questions customers are asked while ordering a Subway sandwich, was used to introduce Marx’s theory of alienation.
The bravest moment was when Steel launched a blitz on educators for being boring.
Everyone in the house knew the formula for working out how many teachers and academics would be in an audience of lefties at the Lowry on a Sunday night. And we all knew the answer would be big.
Taking on your core audience – is that a sign of a mid-life crisis?
Mark Steel, Lowry centre, Salford - £14. Mark is on tour until Christmas.

A photographer's tale of two cities

Photographer Jan Chlebik lives in Manchester and loves New York.
His exhibition of black and white pictures puts both cities in the same - slightly dreamy - world.
His aim is to make us think about the millions of normal things going on in the great buildings.
The 21 photos on show in Artland - Manchester's newest gallery - use light, focussing tricks, and natural mist to give us an unexpected view.
Manchester's gothic town hall looks great from these angles - a gem most citizens take for granted.
New York's moody riverscapes tell us that the Hudson is foggier than the Irwell.
And the motorways and jammed-in buildings bring home the similarities of city life.
Setting up the shot is a key skill - and Jan has climbed high and lay low to enhance the experience of the viewer.
The exhibition is well worth a look - a reminder that photography is more than a zillion identical snaps on Facebook or Myspace.
Manchester & New York is the first show at the Artland Gallery, Friends Meeting House, Bootle Street entrance, Manchester, from October 6 to December 13 2008. Opening times 11am to 4pm Monday to Friday, 1pm to 4pm Saturday.

The beginning of Absolute

Segueing Paul Weller into Phil Collins is a criminal offence. Tell Culture Squad detectives it happened at 10.35am this morning – three hours into the life of Absolute Radio.
The new name on the dial has replaced Virgin.
But the travel is still sponsored by Renault, and they still have the ‘eighties hour.
Over the weekend the station played tracks in reverse alphabetical order from V to A.
The last record on Virgin was American Pie. We all knew the first song on Absolute at 7.45am would begin with an A.
I’ll be back in a couple of minutes with Agadoo quipped star DJ Christian O’Connell.
The new era began with the Beatles’ A Day In The Life from Sergeant Pepper. Good choice.
On Thursday, said Christian, the show will come from somewhere associated with that song.
Wow – a national radio station bringing its breakfast show to Blackburn. In fact he meant Abbey Road studios in, er, London.
Listener John rang to say he liked the new station so much he was speechless.
And then it was on to Absolute Beginners by Bowie.
Elvis Costello, The Who, the Bunnymen, and the Rolling Stones kept things going nicely.
Whoever picked the new stuff loved alliteration - Kaiser Chiefs, Kooks, Killers, and Kings of Leon.
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head made a brave change of pace to commemorate Paul Newman and Hendrix’s Voodoo Child was built up as radio rebellion.
In fact it's four minutes of mumbling and showing off.
The promise was “real music” but at ten Absolute changed to Radio Hairdresser.
Van Halen, Kim Wylde, Springsteen, Duran Duran (music by and for accountants from Solihull), and Hall and Oates - before the Style Council’s Walls Come Tumbling Down was merged into Genesis.
Time for the off button.
Absolute Radio is on 1215AM – 1242AM in Staffordshire.

A wonderful week in Weatherfield

Coronation Street is at its best when there is humour, compassion, and a terrifying psycho.
So this last week has been a Weatherfield classic.
Harry’s humiliation – ending with a walk-of-shame through the pub could have happened to Stan Ogden or Jack Duckworth in an earlier era.
Bookies have replaced window-cleaners as the Street’s would-be Romeos.
The history of the show is dominated by strong and emotional female characters.
But last week it was the men who bonded, hugged, and shed a tear.
Vernon the drummer began his time on the show as a work-shy scoundrel.
He left – still without a day’s proper graft on his cv – but also without a dry eye in the house. His goodbye scenes with flat mate Lloyd were heart-rending.
Well done writers. Liz and Vern were never going to work again.
Humiliated Harry hurried up and left – but not before saying a really touching farewell to son Dan. These northern blokes are suddenly in touch with their emotions.
Capitalist wanna-bes don’t do well on the Street. They are always outsiders.
Baldwin the Cockney was often unpleasant. But Tony the Scottish rags and property magnate is a serial killer waiting to happen.
He is so single-minded he can’t even be diverted by sex – as teenage temptress Rosie found to her cost.
Now he’s on the warpath – with fiancée Carla, her lover Liam, Rosie, Kevin, Sally, Tyrone, and sundry innocent bystanders all liable to hit the mortuary slab.
This man is a proper villain. David Platt should watch and learn.
Oddly for a soap we even have character in New York on business. Everyone else works within five minutes walk – making Coronation Street the world’s most sustainable community.
Coronation Street, ITV1, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The episodes mentioned can be scene on the catch up service.