What is this ‘soul’ that has been sold? The Hacienda? The majority of people living in Manchester weren’t born or were too young to get in when it closed, and it closed because of Manchester gangs not some neoliberal anything, not because of questionable foreign investment. Perhaps Manchester’s real soul was killed by slum clearances in the 60s, perhaps by the depopulation of the 70s and 80s that followed the collapse of the industrial base. Perhaps it changed when some jobs started appearing in the 90s and people started going to work instead of making the most of their unemployed time making music? Times change and this has never been a place to stand still. If you want to stand still then nothing new will come along.
So perhaps these posters are oversimplified and a bit trite and perhaps they look a bit like someone trying to make a name for themselves.
The viral yellow poster is speaking truth, I mean the Hacienda is dead and over it sits an estate agent that had to be protested to stop it discriminating against social security claimants who have been socially cleansed from the city centre as the council repeatedly green lights developments with little or no social housing. While Osborne laments Bernstein but none of the thousand of people his austerity killed and is still killing now it is Starmer & Reeves austerity. Ultimately the metrics of a successful city continue to be dictated by what can be measured by economists and data scientists while the messy reality that culture conveys is discounted until it can be commodified into something inoffensive. Maybe the real icon of Manchester is the loathsome centrism of Mick Hucknall sadly.
What is this ‘soul’ that has been sold? The Hacienda? The majority of people living in Manchester weren’t born or were too young to get in when it closed, and it closed because of Manchester gangs not some neoliberal anything, not because of questionable foreign investment. Perhaps Manchester’s real soul was killed by slum clearances in the 60s, perhaps by the depopulation of the 70s and 80s that followed the collapse of the industrial base. Perhaps it changed when some jobs started appearing in the 90s and people started going to work instead of making the most of their unemployed time making music? Times change and this has never been a place to stand still. If you want to stand still then nothing new will come along.
So perhaps these posters are oversimplified and a bit trite and perhaps they look a bit like someone trying to make a name for themselves.
The viral yellow poster is speaking truth, I mean the Hacienda is dead and over it sits an estate agent that had to be protested to stop it discriminating against social security claimants who have been socially cleansed from the city centre as the council repeatedly green lights developments with little or no social housing. While Osborne laments Bernstein but none of the thousand of people his austerity killed and is still killing now it is Starmer & Reeves austerity. Ultimately the metrics of a successful city continue to be dictated by what can be measured by economists and data scientists while the messy reality that culture conveys is discounted until it can be commodified into something inoffensive. Maybe the real icon of Manchester is the loathsome centrism of Mick Hucknall sadly.