Local author and journalist Colin Blaney has spent the past decade or so interviewing personalities from Manchester and Salford as a reporter for various local news organisations. Famous as the author of 'Grafters', the best-selling true crime hit which told the tale of his years as the leader of a gang of thieves who operated throughout Europe during the 70s and 80s, Colin could be described as a maverick himself; that is, someone untamed by the need to conform to the nine-to-five lifestyle. His interest in these kindred spirits led him to interview some famous and not so famous people who have had an impact on the cultural, sporting and political life of Manchester. Among them are writers, musicians, teddy boys, mods and rockers, a woman who worked at the Midland Hotel and the man behind the Strangeways riot. Some of them are no longer with us while others played a small but vital role in the city and displayed the Mancunian spirit regularly described as 'not kow-towing to anyone'. Some are Mancs by birth others have been welcomed with open arms by a city well known as a magnet for immigrants from all four corners of the globe.
Colin Shindler was dealt a cruel hand by Fate when he became a passionate Manchester City supporter. In this brilliant sporting autobiography he recalls the great characters of his youth, like his eccentric Uncle Laurence, as well as his professional heroes. Threaded through these sporting events is the author's own story, which touches on a universal nerve, growing up in a Jewish family, his childhodd destroyed by the sudden death of his mother and his slow emotional recovery through his love for Manchester City. It is a tale that reveals what it is like to be on the outside looking in, with his nose pressed up against the sweet shop window watching the United supporters take all the wine gums.
This book argues that Ford Madox Brown’s murals in the Great Hall of Manchester Town Hall (1878–93) were the most important public art works of their day. Brown’s twelve designs on the history of Manchester, remarkable exercises in the making of historical vision, were semi-forgotten by academics until the 1980s, partly because of Brown’s unusually muscular conception of what history painting should set out to achieve. This ground-breaking book explains the thinking behind the programme and indicates how each mural contributes to a radical vision of social and cultural life. It shows the important link between Brown and Thomas Carlyle, the most iconoclastic of Victorian intellectuals, and reveals how Brown set about questioning the verities of British liberalism.
Towards the end of the American Civil War in 1863, Sergeant Zack Jackson, a black Confederate soldier, wakes up after a battle in Virginia, in a field full of his dead comrades, and he sees a hand held up in the middle of all the dead bodies. On further investigation, a dying soldier hands him a wallet, with both monies, his home address, and the deeds of a map of his claim to a gold mine. He requests, with his dying wish, that Zack takes the contents to his wife and family and to eventually go and find the gold mine. He then dies of his wounds. Zack, also gravely wounded, sets off to find the dead soldier’s home but collapses along the way. Isaac, a young 11-year-old Jewish boy, finds him and manages to take him back to his parents’ home where they look after him until he is fully recovered. Zack, fully refreshed, goes to find the dead soldier’s wife and hands her the wallet. She thanks him for his courage and honesty and agrees for him to search for the mine. Together with Isaac and his dog, they begin their journey through the dangerous terrain of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unknown to them, they were being followed by an outlawed gang of Chinese immigrants, who had overheard their plans. They eventually manage to find the mine, but it is not what they expected. Ancient settlers from various Red Indian tribes appear and create havoc, and the two heroes are tasked with unbelievable struggles to save their own lives.
THE INTER CITY JIBBERS. WHERE UNITED WENT, THEY FOLLOWED. MAYHEM WAS NEVER FAR BEHIND.The Inter City Jibbers were the most notorious Manchester United hooligan crew of the last thirty years, and Colin 'Beaner' Blaney was up to his neck in it. His years as an ICJ and Wide Awake Firm (WAF) footsoldier saw him blacklisted as an 'Undesirable' by Interpol for smuggling Ecstasy, tearing through gangland warfare with rival crooks, and carrying out daring jewellery thefts as far afield as Taiwan and South Korea.Spurred on by the overwhelming acclaim for his first book, Grafters, Blaney's latest account includes stories originally deemed too risky to tell. This shocking, searingly honest new work from the core of the Inter City Jibbers tells of four attempted jailbreaks, and describes members of the ICJ's experiences in numerous hellish overseas jails. These include the gang rape of one WAF member in a Pakistani prison, a brutal time spent in a county lock-up in Virginia and a stint in a Yakuza-filled Japanese jail, as well as run-ins with gun-wielding foreign thugs. Above all, this is a chronicle of twenty-five years of life as an Undesirable, stealing anything that wasn't nailed down.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that in Britain today nothing works. In the face of mounting inflation and widespread industrial action, this book offers an incisive analysis of the UK’s problems and a new approach to tackling them. Economic growth and higher wages, the traditional responses of mainstream politicians, are simply not enough. This is because the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ is only the face of a deeper crisis of foundational liveability. The UK is confronted not only with squeezed residual incomes but also failing public services and decaying social infrastructure. The only way out is to embrace a political practice of adaptive reuse that works around the constraints that frustrate mainstream policies. Presenting a new model for the three pillars of liveability – disposable and residual income, essential services and social infrastructure – When nothing works challenges the assumptions of left and right in the UK political classes and offers a fresh approach to the economically visible and politically actionable.
This book examines the rise and fall of the aristocratic Lacy family in England, Ireland, Wales and Normandy. This involves a unique analysis of medieval lordship in action, as well as a re-imagining of the role of English kingship in the western British Isles and a rewriting of seventy-five years of Anglo-Irish history. By viewing the political landscape of Britain and Ireland from the perspective of one aristocratic family, this book produces one of the first truly transnational studies of individual medieval aristocrats. This results in an in-depth investigation of aristocratic and English royal power over five reigns, including during the tumultuous period of King John and Magna Carta. By investigating how the Lacys sought to rule their lands in four distinct realms, this book also makes a major contribution to current debates on lordship and the foundations of medieval European society.
This is the first ever book to analyse outsourcing – contracting out public services to private business interests. It is an unacknowledged revolution in the British economy, and it has happened quietly, but it is creating powerful new corporate interests, transforming the organisation of government at all levels, and is simultaneously enriching a new business elite and creating numerous fiascos in the delivery of public services. What links the brutal treatment of asylum-seeking detainees, the disciplining of welfare benefit claimants, the profits effortlessly earned by the privatised rail companies, and the fiasco of the management of security at the 2012 Olympics? In a word: outsourcing. This book, by the renowned research team at the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change in Manchester, is the first to combine ‘follow the money’ research with accessibility for the engaged citizen, and the first to balance critique with practical suggestions for policy reform.
This comprehensive and authoritative guide to licensing law is co-authored by the UK’s only professor of licensing law and two eminent licensing practitioners. It provides a detailed exposition and contextual analysis of the legal provisions governing the licensing of alcohol and entertainment under the Licensing Act 2003, encompassing both the legislative and decision-making framework of the Act as well as its implications for human rights. Fully updated and revised, it covers the various forms of authorization for licensable activities and licence and certificate conditions that might be attached as well as the enforcement and appeal provisions of the Act. This new edition, building on the highly acclaimed original work published in 2005, includes subsequent legislative changes and case law decisions. New additions to this edition include: expanded coverage of enforcement provisions and police powers a revised and extended chapter on appeals, in light of the practical and procedural developments that have evolved in the appeal process amendments to existing regulations and the revised Statutory Guidance issued in 2007. This book is essential reading for all local authorities, legal advisers, licensing policy advisors, operators and the police as well as those applying for licences.
Colin Garnett grew up in Stockport, South Manchester, in a tough working-class culture. A teenage involvement with alcohol, amphetamines and violence led to an adult heroin addiction. For many years he was lost in a crime-and-drugs lifestyle and did time in twenty-seven different English prison and two military prisons. But on 17th June 1993, in a prison chapel, he turned to God with a heavy heart and received Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour. From that moment, God started to transform Colins life. Colin has become a highly effective evangelist with a very powerful ministry to those in prisons and their families, to those trapped in addictions and their families, and to the hearts and minds of developing youth. Colin and his wife Deanna now run The Bethesda Recovery Homes of South Africa where they are seeing a steady stream of individuals and families receiving reconciliation and freedom. ENDORSEMENTS Meeting Colin Garnett and hearing his story was a spiritual tonic if not a shake-up! May God continue to keep him and use him in this very needy and difficult work for which he is almost uniquely gifted and qualified Dick Lucas, Rector Emeritus, St Helens Church, Bishopsgate, London Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. It has been a privilege to see that hope so powerfully expressed through the life and ministry of Colin Garnett, one of our graduates. Read and Rejoice. Dr Steve Brady, Principle, Moorlands College As you read this story you might forgiven for doubting its veracity because it seems so fantastic in an age of cynicism, but I urge you to read on to the end and conclude that only God can change a life and that He has done well with Colin. Rev. Vic Jackopson M.B.E. - Founder and President of Hope Now International. There are some very special people that God takes from the most unlikely places and transforms them to serve Him in an utterly amazing way. Colin is one of those people and this book is a testimony to the amazing God who continues to turn our rags to His riches. Enjoy this challenging read that has a profound message to give in an age of cynicism and despair. Colin Bennett, Deputy Principle, Moorlands College
This book is the result of national research conducted amongst England?s directly elected mayors and the councillors that serve alongside them. It is the first such major publication to assess the impact on local politics of this new office and fills a gap in our understanding of how the Local Government Act 2000 has influenced local governance. The book also draws from a range of research that has focused on elected mayors - in England and overseas - to set out how the powers, roles and responsibilities of mayors and mayoral councils would need to change if English local politics is to fundam.
Chris Henderson formed the Chelsea Headhunters – who later earned a reputation as the most dangerous fans in Britain - as well as the band Combat 84 who, with their punk attitude and uncut, Orwellian lyrics, represented the antithesis of middle-class England. After the jailing of Stephen 'Hickey' Hickmott, Henderson organised a gang of Chelsea fans who travelled to matches by luxury coach with the aim of causing havoc and destruction. They were finally arrested and their subsequent trial was meant to be the crowning glory of Thatcher's campaign to vanquish hooliganism. Instead, the dramatic collapse of the case sounded the death knell for all the undercover police operations and mass indiscriminate arrests that had been ordered by the authorities to squash the activities of Henderson and others. The 'Ministry' continued to pursue Henderson and prior to the 2002 World Cup, he and Hickmott were named as the two leaders planning hooligan and criminal acts for the tournament in South Korea and Japan, which culminated in Henderson being arrested and refused entry to Japan for the England v. Argentina match. Told in Henderson's exact words, this is the dramatic story of an era of music and football, when how you looked counted as much as how you performed. With its depiction of events surrounding South Korea/Japan 2002, Who Wants It? also shows how the scourge of hooliganism continues to blight the beautiful game today.
Islam presents new challenges and new questions to Christians and to the West in a post-9/11 context. However, in many situations in the world, where Christians and Muslims live peacefully side-by-side as neighbours, political considerations are not uppermost. Challenging us to examine our own attitudes, Colin Chapman considers the issues involved in Christian engagement with Muslims and Islam. He explores, ultimately, how Christians can effectively bear witness to Jesus. This revised and updated edition incorporates brand new material on 'Islamic Terrorism', 'What is Islam?', 'The Qur'anic View of Christians' and 'Explaining Christian Beliefs About Jesus'. It will equip Christians to better understand Muslims and Islam in a rapidly changing world.
Muties. Freaks. Abominations. Radscum. Monsters. The twisted victims of radiation, biochemical warfare, and mutagenic agents, mutants are outsiders, loathed, feared, shunned, and victimized by the ranks of normal humanity. Whether unique in their taint or members of stable groups of new radborn species, mutants may possess abilities strange or horrific, may be threat or ally, individuals every bit as complex and individual as any normal man. Humans and beasts alike may bear mutations, and there are whispers that such perversions of nature have occurred as to allow plants to think and move like men... Irradiated Freaks is the mutant supplement for the Atomic Highway Roleplaying Game.
This book takes a unique approach to precedent and statutory interpretation which are considered in the context of self-contained case studies on selected topics of substantive law commonly taught in first year undergraduate programmes. It provides an initial overview of the principles of statutory interpretation and precedent, with extensive cross-referencing to their detailed consideration in case studies. It uses case studies throughout to extract the principles of statutory interpretation and precedent from substantive law. It examines the EU influence on principles of statutory interpretation. It analyses the ongoing implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 and resulting case law. It provides students with guidance on further reading at the end of chapters
In the spring of 1964 more than 50,000 people turned out to watch the two-legged semi-final of the FA Youth Cup between Manchester City and Manchester United. It was a time of great hope and excitement: a new era was to be ushered in, with the virtues of youth personified in the Beatles and Harold Wilson - and in the teams that played. But what happened next? For some, like George Best, it was the start of a golden era of success; but for others it was the highlight of a career that never happened. In Shindler's compelling third book of his Manchester trilogy, he captures an era of high expectation, talking to many who played in or watched these famous games; but he also movingly portrays what went wrong for others.
The career of Wisconsin-born Joseph Losey spanned over four decades and several countries. A self-proclaimed Marxist and veteran of the 1930s Soviet agit-prop theater, he collaborated with Bertholt Brecht before directing noir B-pictures in Hollywood. A victim of McCarthyism, he later crossed the Atlantic to direct a series of seminal British films such as "Time Without Pity," "Eve," "The Servant," and "The Go-Between," which mark him as one of the cinema's greatest baroque stylists. His British films reflect on exile and the outsider's view of a class-bound society in crisis through a style rooted in the European art house tradition of Resnais and Godard. Gardner employs recent methodologies from cultural studies and poststructural theory, exploring and clarifying the films' uneasy tension between class and gender, and their explorations of fractured temporality.
“I was starting to doubt that I’d ever enjoy canine company again, and you being a twelve-week old Border Terrier pup like me made our meeting especially good.” A chance meeting between two twelve-week-old puppies in a Manchester park leads to a series of letters from young Stanley to his new friend Clementina. Based on true events viewed through canine eyes, this work is a collection of that correspondence, and reflects upon the quirky world of humans, dogs and the interaction between the two. With a comic perception that is perhaps only afforded to innocent observers, each letter stands alone as a testimony to Stanley’s efforts to comprehend the mysteries of life that confront young pups in their carefree progress throughout their first year. From human vanity to intrusive vets to pesky cats, from basic bodily functions to the high-blown appreciation of modern art, Stanley keeps Clementina in the picture as he steers his way relentlessly, if not always smoothly, through the challenges that life throws at him, culminating in his first birthday party. In this deliciously humorous work, wittily illustrated by W.H. Mather, readers will delight not only in recognising their own pets, but also themselves and their fellow dog walkers. But you don’t have to be a dog-owner to appreciate Stanley’s letters as their comedy will appeal to everybody. And anybody contemplating getting a puppy should take advantage of Stanley’s wit and insight to help them in taking that fateful step of joining the ranks of the dog-owning fraternity. Pick up Stanley’s narrative and immerse yourself in the humorous, blossoming friendship of two adorable Border Terrier puppies!
Colin Webster-Watson (1926-2007) was a sculptor who lived and exhibited in London, Rome, New York, Palm Springs and Wellington. He was also a prolific poet. Natural Zoo brings together 101 of his poems, written over 50 years. They explore his passionate belief in the innate goodness of the natural world, the role of the artist, and the power of love.
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