Sarah Hartley

I thought the last word on the Labour Party Conference should be a blogger’s word. As the politics bandwagon packed up and moved onto Birmingham for the Tories to take centre stage, more than 200 people turned out for Left Question Time – the finale of the Convention of the Left, which ran alongside the Labour Party conference here in Manchester.
Culture Vulture was there – but the expected George Galloway wasn’t.

“Perhaps Big Brother and Talk Radio’s George Galloway would have felt uncomfortable down amongst the common people. Because the convention had no platforms.
Well-known panellists – like would-be Labour leader John McDonnell and trade union baron Mark Serwotka – sat at ground level with the audience around them” noted Mr or Ms Vulture.

But surely the cat suit wearing, milk lapping politician doesn’t need a stage in order to perform?
Whatever the reason for his absence the crowd was apparently more than adequately entertained/informed by replacement Clive Serle, the Manchester Respect Renewal activist Clive Searle who, Culture Vulture observed, held his own with the revolutionary elite – despite never having been the victim of a tabloid sting.

I’ve just been given a share of the “keys” to the Mancunian Way blog. If you like, a third way between Sarah and Paul. Mainly – but not entirely – I’ll be talking about the amazing variety of ways that the creative and arts sectors in Manchester are being changed by digital technologies.
With Manchester Literature Festival on the horizon, I wanted to highlight a few of the ways in which the city’s literary community has been using the web. It’s perhaps no surprise that writers like the web, after all it’s primarily a written medium. Yet as a recent provocation by Andrew Gallix made clear, e-literature – or literature written specifically for the web, hasn’t really taken off. Whether or not we’ve succumbed to the allure of the Sony Reader or the Kindle, two new and desirable portable reading devices, the book remains special: cheap, portable, and cherishable.
So, I find the web is more than ever a place to find out what’s going on in Manchester’s literary scene. A good place to start is Literature Northwest, where a wide range of literary events – whether workshops or readings – is constantly updated. And, so easy is it to set up a blog, that every new night now finds its audience far quicker than in the past, through it’s own website or through connecting people via Facebook. The latter now tends to suggest other people I might know – and the ones it gets right are inevitably other writers.
With a new term starting there are perhaps a hundred students about to start creative writing courses at the city’s 3 universities, and most of them, at one time or other, you’ll find with their laptop or their Moleskine in the Art of Tea, Sand Bar, Trof or the Cornerhouse. Away from their garrett, the Web 2.0 writer might also find time to browse the online pages of Manchester based publishers and magazines such as Transmission, Comma, ifpthenq and Carcanet. Having missed last week’s intriguing new night at the Deaf Institute, because I was out of the city, I’m looking forward to this Wednesday’s The Other Room.

Thought this might cheer up the city’s blogged out bloggers today. A series of cartoons from the always stimulating Online Journalism Blog.
I particularly liked this stage – the feedback.
As all bloggers know, comments may be the lifeblood of a blog but being called “fishface” (and far worse!) does take some getting used to in the early life of your blog.

Thanks to Paul Bradshaw and Alex Hughes for providing a light bite for Friday.

With the Labour Party Conference having packed up and left the city, us bloggers can return to our more normal fare.
Looking back over the past few days of online coverage, I’ve come up with this final tally of our interactive features.
The topic which sparked the most debate during the coverage was this exclusive from blogger and journalist Peter Devine about the potential use of city apartments for social housing.
Not only has it already received more than 30 comments, but it was also the top news story for the M.E.N main site this week.
Our interactive timeline received more than 600 views, while the dedicated Twitter stream was updated with 160 interactions – many of them live as Peter frantically tweeted from his mobile phone inside the conference.
There were also four audio blogs from Jennifer Williams and a total of 30 blog posts from David Ottewell, Peter and myself.
And photographers across Manchester contributed 190 pictures to Flickr with the tag Lab08.
So what’s been the influence of all this activity? Has the Labour Party Conference changed the public’s view of the current Government?
A poll I started this morning reveals that, so far at least, it hasn’t – but there’s still time to vote so have your say below.
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This week’s pick of the posts is Blog by Boz, the transport travelling cat.
Created (somehow) by Bozzle who describes himself as “ a cat, living in the north of England, who commutes daily by train. I like fish and sleeps. “
Although it’s not clear which commuter route Boz travels each day, his observations on the journey – and particularly the other passengers – provide a stream of humorous material to go at.
The blog started back in 2006 and so is well into its stride by now and I know from the recent Manchester bloggers meet-up that it already has a loyal following.
And while you admire this feline’s dexterity with the keyboard you can only marvel that he also provides recommended reading (currently Paradise Reclaimed) and has a Flickr stream of photographs too.
All is explained in the disclaimer: “Clearly this whole blog is fictitious and all similarities between the events and persons here described and actual events and persons are entirely accidental. Obviously. Because cats don’t really commute by train. They have bicycles. “
It’s a fun read and has some pithy observations. Follow Bozzle at http://blogbyboz.blogspot.com.
Myself and Paul will be hunting around for blogs or websites to feature here, add to our blogroll and include in the e-view page of the M.E.N on Saturday so, if you’ve got one to nominate, contact me here or submit a link below. The only criteria is that they have some connection with Manchester.

Manchester’s political bloggers get stuck into the Labour Party Conference. Here’s my pick of posts so far.
“Why oh why oh why can’t people on the platform at political meetings notice when the audience has lost the will to live? Saturday’s Socialist Campaign Group fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference was held in a sweltering room at the Manchester Mechanics’ Institute. Comrades were already tired from listening to ministers talk nonsense all day, scurrying round the Convention of the Left, and marching against war. As the crowd shrunk and people started fanning themsleves frantically with copies of the conference timetable the platform grew!” Action without theory.

Politoholic has his own ideas about what Nick Clegg is describing so expansively here! Other caption suggestions welcome below.
“No plotter is more tragic than Graham Stringer, the former Manchester City Council leader who led the city as it began its incredible regeneration, but is now infamous as the first Labour MP to call for Brown to resign. Stringer wasn’t there last night, but he was the butt of many jokes and is reduced to being described on the BBC as one of those MPs you’ve probably never heard of. When this chapter of the book is finished, Graham Stringer and his co-conspirators will find themselves forever sidelined.” Stephen Newton’s diary.
“Gordon is fighting back at last. His interview with Andrew Marr yesterday recognised some of his own failings, for once, and his argument that his long period in charge of the money, mixing with the best financial brains internationally made him the best person to clear up the current mess, did carry some credibility. Promising to crackdown on City bonuses will play well too, with his lefties.” Skipper .
“The inevitable conclusion? It’s rather odd, isn’t it, that if the boy David seals the deal, this tendency-cum-gang will have scored another triumph, just as their essential approach is revealed to be so out of step with the times? It’s another example, perhaps, of those quixotic historical forces that seem to be ensuring that just as the Bush government nationalises financial institutions and even ardent free-marketeers talk about a new phase of history, the next chancellor will be that well-known interventionist George Osborne.” John Harris, Guardian’s Comment is Free.
If you’ve been blogging the conference, let me know and I’ll update here. ( Note, scurrilous OK, libellous not!)

Delegates inside the Labour Party Conference may be concerned with squeaky clean politics but it’s a dramatic increase in street sweeping activity which is proving to be an issue of debate for city centre residents.
Online users of Manchester’s City Centre Residents Forum have been reporting cleaning crews out sweeping all through the night, keeping city folk awake.
Last night there was even a call for a “sweeper watch” to start work keeping records of all the activity.
Neil Sterio is one of those who complained earlier this week: “How wonderful though to have the reassurance of coppers on every corner (it’s like Havana!) and our city streets being swept. I frequent a bar on Canal Street (Manto) virtually every Sunday evening and have never seen a sweeper there at that time of the day before (11pm) but it went passed three times last night!”
And the activity has even been mentioned in coverage of the event with Twitter poster for management company Fishburn Hedges reporting: “amused watching James Naughtie doing a walk n talk in front of the town hall as a street sweeping van drives round him. Cut!”
But the increase in cleaners has also prompted a dilemma for those complaining – if the streets can be so clean for a special event, why not all the time? as Stephen Shepherd points out.
He says: “The sweepers on our part of Whitworth street are driving us mad – always six times a night but now its more like 10.
“I think that if the city can be kept this clean for Labour then they can do it for the. Should we not be saying to the council; ‘you started this so keep it up’.”
What do you think – too frequent or an improved service?

There’s now well over 100 pictures from the weekend’s protests at the Labour Party Conference.
See the slideshow below. If you’ve got pictures covering any conference activity, don’t forget to tag them Lab08 on Flickr so they can be easily seen.

If you’re blogging the goings on in around the conference, let me know so that I can share your wisdom here.
As well as our own MEN blogs on the subject here, I’m seeing a few bloggers getting into the conference spirit.

Iain Dale’s Diary has already taken a look at the Top Trump cards available. “As one of only two Lib-Dems in the pack, party leader Nick Clegg may be disappointed with average ratings. But he does better than Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly and former Shadow Home Secretary David Davies who are both dropped altogether.”
And of course there’s plenty of Twitter activity as you can see via the widget below.

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The list of blogs covering the recent Manchester bloggers meet-up is now updated. I think I’ve got them all but, if there’s more – send ‘em in!