We had our second two weeks of self-isolation, and it was OK

We coped. Elliot didn't get poorly, despite his positive COVID test and we never showed symptoms to contradict our negative tests.

The first isolation in September when Louis tested positive was tough, I'm not going to lie. It came as a shock and so we started in a state of unprepared anxiety, with ladled on potential guilt that we may have infected people we had walked with. 

This time we were ready, we knew we would be supported if we needed it, and bizarrely, we had a lot more to distract us - The American election was a bit of a rollercoaster, which we properly strapped in for, and then as soon as we were shut in, so too the rest of the country was following us by going into a new lockdown. So yes there wasn't the 'fear of missing out' we had in September, which might seem a bit selfish, but it's how it affects you.

It's the young I feel bad for. It's easier for us to press pause. They haven't the same sense of perspective, and it's putting off some anxious life events. We have to support them with kindness and sensitivity.

I had a trip into Manchester to look forward to on Thursday this week. The trip to Venus supermarket was spontaneous and I absolutely devoured my takeaway Lahmacun from their grill. Officially we are working from home, where possible. But some things require meeting face to face, safely, and we don't have a printer at home.

And here's another thing, it might only be reaching a few hundred people, but this blog is such a satisfying thing to sit down and do, usually in the evening. Recording a radio programme once a week also gives me the focus of discovering new music and finding a dozen songs or so to play, some of them linked and with a story. Hopefully that's been reflected on what I've written about, but I've got a list of further topics to get through in this month of blogging, and some more books to read. 

Second Acts are great, but so are First Acts

Last week on our radio show (Music Therapy on Tameside Radio, I may have mentioned it) our opening two tracks were Désolé by Gorillaz and Headstart For Happiness by The Style Council. Both the work of important British musical figures who have made a significant and broad body of work.

Paul Weller keeps knocking it out. Maybe it's because he keeps having kids into his 60s, but he just can't seem to stop, and I admire massively how he keeps trying new things all the time. I'd watched the new Style Council documentary on Sky Arts, Long Hot Summers the week before and loved it (trailer above). I mean, really loved hearing those songs again, and seeing how happy Paul Weller was making music again. As he says in the clip at the start, "it was the freedom I was looking for coming out of The Jam". Certainly, Cafe Bleu managed to lose a hell of a lot of Jam fans; those instrumentals and free form jazz with guest vocals from Tracey Thorn weren't what the all the Saturdays Kids wanted. Personally, at the time, I lapped it all up. I remember standing in the street with my copy of Our Favourite Shop and showing it to one Boy About Town and Jam fan who was stunned at the direction Weller had gone in.  

It's a really good music documentary. Most of the talking heads work, I won't say which ones grated. And the contributions by the core members of the band - Weller, Mick Talbot, Dee C Lee and Steve White - all add different blocks to the story and our understanding of what they were creating then, and how they view it now. I loved the piece with film director Tim Pope who directed the Long Hot Summer punt on the river in Cambridge, which was so bold at the time. 

But it got me thinking since the show how disappointed I was that some aspects of the Style Council appreciation seem to have been quite dismissive of The Jam. I gave the 1980 album Sound Affects a spin from soup to nuts. It is a remarkable record, probably my favourite Jam album, and apparently Weller's too. As this Quietus review explains, for a 22 year old to create something so rich in its influences was incredibly bold, to package it all up into something that sounds this good all these years later, and stands proud alongside its biggest influence, The Beatles' Revolver, is maybe worthy of more respect.

It's the same with Gorillaz. Damon Albarn has done amazing things since Blur, but he also made some great Blur records too.

So on the show this week we're going to remind ourselves of that. Right to the end. Stay tuned, 103.6FM, or on the listen again. 

Regeneration Manchester - 30 years of storytelling by Len Grant

Pic from Len Grant!

This bundle of gloriousness arrived yesterday. It's the new book by Manchester photographer and artist Len Grant, designed by a former collaborator of mine, Alan Ward of Axis Design. With those two involved, it was always going to be quality. But there is a richness and a warmth that has exceeded my expectations.

I attended the launch over the summer, virtually of course, and immediately signed up to crowdfund the printing of it, so got an early subscribers copy with my name listed as a subscriber in the back, alongside lots of friends, and Len signed a personal message too.

This work is so important. Manchester's renewal and regeneration is an ever changing story. There will be other books that concentrate on the architecture, heritage and design. There will be others that take a critical view of the politics of it all. In some ways, the recent TV show Manctopia tried to blend the wider context of housing policy into one narrative, especially where it collided with the real lives of displaced and uprooted people. And featured some real idiots.

Len attempts to do something much better. He's telling the visual and emotional story of a changing city with all its complexities, and trying to do so with the people involved at all levels. Nothing is ever as simplistic as the all powerful "they" doing change to the little people. But the other important thing to bear in mind is that this is like a compilation album of Len's work over 30 years. He has the full range of stories and images representing a changing city to present, but he's also a big part of the story himself.

Len's work has featured in such a huge range of books and exhibitions (and, ahem, magazines) that he's already made his impression on how the cities of Manchester and Salford feel about their new spaces and buildings. I've enjoyed reading and absorbing this remarkable book today, I can heartily recommend it as a perfect present for anyone with an interest in the city, in photography, or just in the stories of how lives and places change.

Published by University of Manchester Press, the book is available here.

What a week to be "Subscriber of the week" in the New Statesman

One of my weekly joys during lockdown has been the rattle of the letterbox on a Thursday or a Friday to mark the arrival of the New Statesman in amidst the usual pile of junk mail and adverts for care homes.

I blogged here last year about how much I appreciated it as a package, not just for the high level political analysis, but the culture writing too. Over the last year that weekly drop has also included some outstanding coverage of the pandemic. At a time when all of the national newspapers I was ever loyal to have gone ever crapper, the Staggers seems to just get better and better. Indeed, in one instance giving a column to a writer who was drummed out of the Times, Philip Collins.

Anyway, this week I've been selected to be "subscriber of the week". I don't win anything, I haven't done anything to achieve it, but I do get to answer a bit of a Q&A in the cool back section of the magazine. 

I'm not going to lie, I am dead chuffed about it. It's one of my favourite little corners of the magazine, getting a glimpse into the lives of your fellow readers and what their hinterland is. It comes back to something I've always firmly believed, that any successful media creates an emotional clubbable bond with its readers. It has to be more than a transaction. At the moment, the New Statesman is very much my neck of the woods.  

Somebody Feed Phil - a real gem

Are things feeling better already? I don't know. Trump's going, a vaccine for COVID might be nearing reality, maybe things *can* only get better. 

Given we're all staying in for a while longer, I had stacked up a boat load of folk horror films and some more post-apocalyptic mayhem in the ever growing Walking Dead universe to watch. 

But along came a delight I didn't see coming - Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix, recommended by partner in Music Therapy dispensation, Neil "long hot" Summers. I usually wait until I've finished a series before posting any kind of a review, but I've got the hang of the basic format after just five episodes and I'm calling it early.

I think it's the best thing I've seen all year. 

Here's how it works. Comedy actor Phil Rosenthal, from Everybody Loves Raymond, pitches up in a city and eats food. Oh, so it's a travel show? you say. No, not really, it's probably an anti-travel show travel show. There's no danger, or jeopardy, there's no real information, no travel tips, a teeny bit of historical context, but not much. The continuity is all over the place, so much so, it doesn't really try. At the end of each episode he call his parents in New York over Skype. And yet none of these are flaws, it's just a gloriously sensory experience. But I keep thinking I'm over thinking it. It's just fun, beautiful, warm, loving and funny.  

We remember them, and we thank them

Amidst the celebrations this weekend we must pause for more than a moment to remember, in the best way we can.

We weren't able to attend our usual service, so we held our own on our doorstep this morning.

I remembered my Mum's father Teddy O'Hare who died in a field in Germany in 1943 just a month after his daughter was born, shot down in a Royal Canadian Air Force Lancaster Bomber he was navigating. 

We remembered the sacrifice and the contribution made by my other Grandad, my Dad's dad, Stan Taylor of the Cameron Highlanders and the Royal Commando Regiment in special operations in Malta, Burma, North Africa and Norway. He returned home to his family in North Wales, and led a successful life as a manager at Woolworths stores around the North West. But until he died in 1982 he always lived with the memories of horrors we will never even be able to contemplate. 

I will remember Frank Sayer, my Great Grandfather, who's letters home from the trenches of France in the First World War I now have and will look after carefully. 

And we will also thank my late Uncle Peter, his son Daniel, my nephew Ben, who all served their country, and my cousin Justin who still does. For all they've done, seen and unseen, be it in Northern Ireland, Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or in readiness, and the friends they may be mourning today.

And we will think of how proud we are of our son Max, currently on the home front in this pandemic, doing what is asked of him today, just as he did in South Sudan with the UN mission. 

To all who serve, thank you.

A new dawn has broken, has it not?

http://www.stanleychow.co.uk/

There's only one thing on all of our minds today. The election of decency back to the office of the President of the USA. Sorry for the headline (not sorry).

We've been glued to CNN all week, a change from our usual global 24 hour news channel of choice, France24. I could listen to John King all day long. 

It's hard to comprehend what an unpleasant and repugnant force Trump has been. The powerful reaction from CNN's Van Jones hit that home. ""Every day you're waking up and you're getting these tweets and you just don't know, and you are going to the store and the people who were once afraid to show their racism are getting nastier and nastier to you." That got me. Trump enabled all of that. In our country, we get a glimpse of it from the likes of Farage, but not from the leader of our country, aside from a few stupid old jokes, not at that scale, and frankly you can barely imagine it. In time we'll look back and be baffled not just at how he was elected but that how normalised his outrageous, ungraceful, rude style of governing became. Pundit Sam Harris described Trump's appeal and strategy as allowing people to feel OK about the worst version of themselves, someone incapable of casting moral judgement on people by default makes them feel fine about being hateful and racist.

I've been in a global echo chamber of like minded happy people today, which has made Twitter fun again (notably, John Niven has been immense). I have made a half hearted attempt to try and think of the opposite point of view. What has Trump done that's been good? Frankly, it's a short list. Taking out the Iranian General, maybe? Standing up to China, possibly? I do hear the cry that he's made a political cause of working people in left behind communities, but he harvested their votes and made them his base without any coherent economic plan, and did so on the premise of trade war with China, almost America's version of our false prospectus of Brexit.

Biden's election is also a headache for the Boris Johnson government, as if they didn't have enough problems. A US trade deal that rides roughshod over the Good Friday agreement won't wash. And if I was an official in the Biden team, the mealy mouthed comments of Dominic Raab, our Foreign Secretary, would push the interests of the UK a little further down the list of priorities. 

At some point quite soon, Biden and Harris will have to make really difficult decisions - the kind of test of character that Presidents have to make. The obvious first one being a proper response that takes COVID-19 seriously.

They'll also be asked to tack left by the Bernie Sanders crowd, and rising stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of Congressional Progressive Caucus. The stoked up culture wars will be a further test. I had an immediate taste of it with a tweet about Iraq. But Biden has spent all of his political life negotiating and triangulating, finding a solution, working around the table, not just being righteous. He also has a strong Vice President, possibly the next President, at his side.

Many of us Brits are aware of Biden's shortcomings. Right now I'm very much looking forward to his acceptance speech. I just hope he starts it with - "We're ALRIGHT!" 

credits: illustration by Stanley Chow, punchline by Patrick Maguire.

Lockdown training - finally a goal

One of the things I've been doing since the very beginning of lockdown is a daily workout. Before you think it's another alpha male with an Instagram account show boating, then it really isn't. I never thought I'd be that person, even when I joined a gym a couple of years ago it was often an effort. I've blogged a couple of times before about where this came from and what that journey has been like.

In February 2018 it was about how training gave me focus and got me fitter. 

By July 2019 I was wondering what the next level might be like, getting ripped like Simon Pegg and trying something substantial. In truth, I was plodding along and wasn't very good at goal setting or motivation.

Lockdown changed everything.

Our gym closed, I tried following some Zoom sessions, but it didn't work. Instead I just thought I'd follow some British Army training moves and the routines we used to do at the gym, but without weights. After a while I found myself wondering out loud what the point was, and finally settled on something I think I'd been avoiding, some proper goal setting. 

The thing that has always bothered me about how I looked (and how that affected me) has been my middle. Despite being six foot tall with a slim build, I have what can only be called a pot belly. Despite giving up alcohol and generally eating well, it hasn't really shifted in the few years since I started training. I feel better, and I now have actual shoulders, better stamina, a couple more holes in my belt, and strong legs; but that belly hadn't really shifted. It's always bothered me, and there are incidents and comments over the years that have triggered me. In many ways it's just been a part of me, an element of a negative image of myself that I just priced in.

I researched a set of routines and have now built a six day a week full body workout, with a special day for my major goal - Abs Wednesday. I can't pin point the time it started to make a difference, but it has.  Not ripped, not a six pack, but better.

But though this is the goal, it isn't the main benefit. It's got to the stage now that it's part of the wake up routine. Coffee, news, workout, breakfast, shower. It's a release of endorphins in that middle one that is as important as all of the others to how I can mentally function. Some mornings it's so hard; it gets to the point where I dread a push up more than anything. But I have to go on. I don't have any wisdom, any technical tips, a programme for you to copy, and I'm not trying to laud it over anyone. The point is that I've finally found something that works for me. I'm happy to share the routines with anyone who wants to have a look, but the point is to find something that works for you.

The influencers of the North. Discuss

Ten years ago The Big Issue in the North published a list of the 50 most influential Northerners. 

Reading it now it feels like a piece of history of a different country, where they do things very differently. I was one of the selection panel and can only look back and laugh now at some of the choices we made. Not because we were wrong, but because the whole premise was built on the primacy of big money and raw power having lasting influence. We said that influence was a broad term, covering economic clout, political power, cultural impact and more. And if the way in which you wield that power is the ability to make change and influence lives, then how the Gods must laugh at such plans now. Our list, made up mostly of white blokes, was not of superior beings who have shaped our destiny since then, but of the modestly successful and wealthy, but also the humbled, and ultimately the powerless and uninfluential; as they have been utterly impotent to arrest the meta trends that have shaped the last decade, for better or for worse.

I picked my way through all of this in last week's Big Issue in the North. Even if this isn't a reason for you to buy it, there's always plenty more true goodness in there. So please take the trouble to buy a copy, either from your local vendor, or via this link.

The link to the piece is now live, here.

When you've had a read, let's have a chat about influence and power in our troubled times.

See you on the other side, see you on the fells

I don't think I've ever felt envy like it. 

There was a Freshwalks today to Alport Castles in the Upper Derwent Valley of the Peak District National Park on this most beautiful of autumn days. 

Obviously I was pleased for friends who were able to take this last opportunity to get out in a small group and be guided on a new route, while I sat isolating at home in our virus pit. It must have been quite emotional, as the description of the walk on the Twitter reveals: "Alport Castles quite simply took the breath away. Howden and Derwent reservoirs also competitively resplendent."

This has really been a driver for me over the last year. Not only getting out and walking the hills, but sharing the experiences safely and responsibly. It's been a journey of personal and collective discovery;  pushing the limits of what I can do, but developing friendships of real depth and trust.

I also went out on quite a few walks independently of Freshwalks though the summer, and predictably, on a couple of occasions, got lost. I'll save a few more stories for this blog-a-day through lockdown.

I shall miss this more than anything else over the next month. Thank you to each and every one of you I've walked with. 

Get this clown out of the White House

I've lived through scores of elections and they always seem very important at the time. But we're going to stop up tonight to watch this one and pray for Biden/Harris to win and get this horrible man out of the White House. I can't think of very much more to say than that. Plenty of other pundits are having their say, but I feel moderately optimistic that sense will prevail. My biggest fear is that Trump won't go quietly and is fermenting a civil war.  Like a lot of narcissistic leaders, it's always about him. 

Music Therapy on Tameside Radio - getting into the groove

So, day two of the daily blog. We've had a good couple of months now of playing two hours of music every Sunday night. As I knew it would do, it's found its rhythm and Neil and I have found out more about each other and what we talk about between songs. It feels good, it feels like we're doing something different, fun and worthwhile.

It all came about last year when we bumped into one another a few days after Mark Hollis died. Neil was one of the first people I'd noticed commenting on him on social media when I'd seen the news when I was with my sons in Berlin. We shared a virtually identical Talk Talk epiphany on different sides of the world, but catching the bass line to Life's What You Make It in a dance floor setting. That's as much as you need to know. I knew then in that conversation, I needed to work with his musical knowledge. I went away not knowing what that would look like, thinking publishing, a TV idea, then the more I had time to think of other times when I've been really happy it took me back to a radio show I did a few guest slots on with my pal Adil Bux in Perth in 1989. I also remembered a show Terry Christian used to do on Sunday nights on Stockport station Imagine FM, Northerners With Attitude, where I don't ever recall him playing a bad song. We're not trying to copy that, far from it, but it always struck me as a very honest show.

One thing led to another, and here we are. Neil came up with the name for the show, Andy Hoyle from Tameside Radio took a punt on us, taught us the tech, and we were off. We try not to overthink it too much but the clue's in the name, we just want to try and use music to get people in a good mental space on a Sunday night. We only have one strict rule - there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Neil set the bar for that with his first play list that dropped a delicious Wham B-side Nothing Looks the Same in the Light. Since then we've found remixes and straight up classics from household names and forgotten wonders alike. I can honestly say I've never felt as musically liberated. It's been an absolute journey of discovery, education and thrills. Friends have also got what we're trying to do and made some fantastic suggestions. Keep them coming.

It's great that the station goes out on the internet, but we're now also on Listen Again, or On Demand, so you can listen at leisure. I do keep Spotify play lists, which I share, but they aren't always accurate versions of what we've played and you don't get us.

Let us know what you like, what works, what you might want to hear more of. 

A month in lockdown

A couple of years ago I found it particularly motivating to write a blog a day during the summer lull at work. I decided a couple of days ago that I'd repeat the exercise as our wee family went into our own lockdown after our youngest son came down with COVID-19. It was partly intended as a catharsis because the last lockdown we had to do in September was tough. 

As soon as we got his results we felt far better equipped to deal with it and he felt OK. Back in September I was edging towards a return to work one day a week for team meetings, which Tier 3 has since knocked on the head. Also, we've only actually recorded one of our radio shows from the studio (hope you haven't noticed), but I was worried we wouldn't be able to. And we've been very touched by the generous offers of support and help from friends and neighbours.

Now it turns out that we're all going to be in it together anyway as the whole country is heading for a lockdown. I don't know how that's going to go, but obviously I'm worried about people, especially the young. 

Here's a basic rough list of topics I'll try and get through, but like all good lists of ideas some will drop off and others will pop up.

• Academic writing v journalism
• 24 Hour News
• Our Music Therapy programme
• The Strong Personalities Group
• Family
• Telly
• Labour
• Friends
• All Those Things That Seemed So Important
• Aesthetics
• Devolution and Democracy
• Living with medical conditions
• Welsh Nationalism
• Some book reviews
• Some film reviews
• Folk horror
• Kinder Scout
• Cumberland
• High Intensity Interval Training

 

Coming home to football

So I took my seat on the front row of the main stand at Broadhurst Park, home of FC United of Manchester. I placed my programme, my ticket and my Hollands Pepper Steak Pie in front of me and paused for breath. Some of the Lancaster City substitutes were warming up, knocking the ball back and forth to each other. The tannoy was playing a Jam song, I think, and there was chatter around me about other things than the game we were about to see. And never have I felt happier to be in a football ground.

The last game I'd been to was Blackburn Rovers v Swansea City at the end of February, seven months, two weeks and five days earlier. 

The pie, the Bovril and the smell of football were the first things I sensed. But as the match progressed it was other things that reminded me why watching matches on TV has been no substitute.  It was a decent, physical, boisterous game which ended 1-1. Lancaster should really have won, but you notice so much more by immersing yourself in a game over 90 minutes. You see how players move off the ball, how the bench communicates to them and what the shape of either team is. But even with just 600 people in a tidy new stadium like this, and everyone sensibly observing social distancing, there was a decent enough atmosphere. I never thought I'd enjoy hearing "liner" getting verbals from the home fans as much as I did. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think he enjoyed it too. The players certainly did. There was plenty of good old fashioned shithousery and off the ball niggling for it to rile the home fans. For Lancaster it was one of the bigger crowds they get to play in front of and the players relished it.

That was it really, the collective experience. It's what makes us human and it's what makes football more than a game. Football without fans really is nothing.

And it was another new ground, obviously not one of the 92 (or 91 this season), but the 159th ground I've watched football on.

Warm, welcoming and very, very funny - Matt Forde's Politcally Homeless reviewed

There are some days in your life that stick in your mind for years afterwards.

 

July the 22nd, 2015 is one of them. As was usual back then I hot footed it down to London for an event in Moorgate at the HQ of one of my then clients, but this was different. It wasn't a business do, but a political one, and that was my world that summer. I was pleasantly surprised to be signed into the event by our former babysitter, and good family friend Ciara Hogan, a student at LSE at the time. 

I had a chat to Alison McGovern MP and arranged to meet up, which led to an enduring professional friendship with her husband. I was there with another pal who I'd got closer to over the summer months of the Labour leadership contest and while we were chatting he invited me to his wedding later that year (we're still good mates and he's still married, that's not where this is going). 

The occasion was Tony Blair was speaking. He was trying to get the Labour Party to come to its senses and not elect Jeremy Corbyn. The speech, the interview, the takeaway message was quite brilliant, you might remember it - he said, "if your heart says vote Corbyn, you need a transplant" - but as we all know it was, like most recent political campaigns I've ever been involved in, hopelessly doomed. 

But it was also the first time I saw Matt Forde, who interviewed TB on stage and was everything that day that he's ever been since: warm, welcoming and very, very funny.

I've since seen him do stand up twice live and he just gets better and better, Matt Forde that is, not Tony Blair. You might then have quite rightly guessed that I'm a fan. I've listened to pretty much all of his podcasts and he never ceases to surprise. His interview style is respectful, sharp, but he also invites the subject into a space where they rarely get to go, thus we are treated to rare glimpses of their character and motivations.

Last year, before a gig at The Lowry in Salford, I even managed to interview Matt for a little video I did (and have foolishly deleted) when I was standing in the Euro elections of 2019. I slipped in a podcast joke that he didn't see coming, which was a personal highlight.

He's now got a book out with a title that perfectly sums up my own status, Politically Homeless. 

I devoured it over a weekend, the Saturday of which his team (Nottingham Forest) beat mine (Blackburn Rovers), something to which I was sublimely indifferent to.  

It's more than a memoir, but it tells us a lot about his life. It's not a manifesto for the future, but it's brimming with good ideas. And it's not a handbook for political activists, but the tips are priceless. 

Paul Wright, a lovely bloke who's been selected to contest our local ward for Labour has it on his Christmas list, he told me over Twitter. I'd suggest he read it now. He'll learn not to organise a photocall to clean graffiti off a wall with only Waitrose Evian water to hand; he'll perhaps be comforted that however dysfunctional and fractious Stockport Labour Group is, at least it's not Stoke; and he'll be given a re-affirmation of why Labour activists really, really hate Liberal Democrats (though living round here he knows that already). I'd give Paul my copy but it's signed by Matt and it's going on my political bookshelf next to prized signed tomes by Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Tony Wilson and Andrew Marr. That's how much I liked it.

A few weeks after the Tony Blair event I got to interview someone on that very same stage who had lived an extraordinary life. I remember thinking, how do I get great stories out of a guy who has been played in a Hollywood film by Leonardo di Caprio? I deployed some of Matt's techniques of building a rapport with the audience and realising that sometimes the obvious question everyone is thinking is the best way in.

On top of it all the book is a powerful statement too in favour of the values of the Britain we want to be - warm, welcoming, and funny (have I said that already). So go on, buy it, read it. Whether you're a political anorak like we are, or just want a good laugh, then I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

The conveyor belt of outrage - I've stepped off

I've 'sort of ' disengaged from Twitter. It's become such a festering hell site of anti-nuance, I've decided to observe, rather than participate. I can't quite bring myself to delete my presence, and I do need the platform when I want to punt out a blog (like this) so I'm working through the process of blocking the most aggro people who seem to love loading on to the conveyor belt of outrage, and easing it out of my field of vision.

I just don't need it in my life, so I'm starting the detoxification of my world by withdrawing from the places where the discourse is so shouty and angsty. One of my favourite writers, Ian Leslie, put it well, so I'm going to quote his passage in full: "Public debates are becoming more algorithmic and binary. You must pick one side or another, and when you do, there is always a ready-made script waiting for you to run. When Tory ministers defended Dominic Cummings over his trip to Durham, it wasn’t just what they said that was depressing but how: in a series of near-identical, robotic tweets. More of us are behaving like politicians. Every row on social media is conducted with a set of arguments, slogans and memes that each side – and in binary arguments there can only be two sides – faithfully deploy."

I guess Twitter is where the debate happens, and it's not just about politics, but sport, especially football. Elsewhere, despite the data scraping and social manipulation, I find Facebook to be more carefully curatable. LinkedIn is mostly corporate boosterism, but at least it has some useful well argued content. And Instagram? Ah well, Instagram is my new vice. It may be harmful for young people trying to live up to an aspiration of image perfection, but for me it's the comforting balm of aesthetic comfort and joy. I love the stimulating drip of goodness than oozes onto my feed, mainly outdoor landscapes, but also photos of food, art, weirdness, shoes, jackets, jeans, retro photos and more music ideas for our programme. The universe it creates is one of walks I want to go on - the Camino, the Appalachian trail, the Wainwrights, the Munroes and the peaks of Snowdon - in boots and fleeces I want to wear. It gives me visual recall of cities and open spaces I’ve only got fading memories of, such the gorgeous South of Western Australian and the deep outback, oddities like Tallinn, Berlin, Marseille, rural Italy, Miami and many more. That's what I need in my life, something to look forward to. It's what we all need, frankly. 

Call it escapism, but I’ve done with reality and I’m done with Twitter.

Downtown Den #111 // Michael Taylor in the Downtown Den

I had great pleasure in joining my old friend Frank McKenna in conversation last week. Inevitably, we're having to adapt to all kinds of new event formats during isolation, lockdown and working from home. This was an old fashioned two-way interview, conducted over Zoom.

We covered a lot, spanning the time we've known each other. The state of the regional media, social media, my first novel and the state of fiction, politics, mental health and my job at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Left Out - The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn

There are good friends of mine who can't bear to pick up this excellent book and learn more of the inevitable feuds and mishaps within the inner workings of the Leader of the Opposition's Office (LOTO). It's too raw, said one, who worked in a previous Labour government and would be tipped over the edge. Especially as the consequences of this protracted self-indulgence is a destructive Conservative government. 

Anyone who has followed this blog and my own political commentary will know where I stand on all of this. I never thought Jeremy Corbyn was even a suitable candidate for leader, and evidently, neither did he. I never trusted, or liked, his inner sanctum. Quite why I was right in that sentiment howls out of every interview and source that Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund speak to. And so I look back now and feel there was an inevitability about it all.  

Given we all know how it ends, and that it pretty much confirms every prejudice I had about many of the key people featured in the book, there isn't much that is surprising, but I'll come onto one significant factor shortly.

But though it isn't surprising, it is still shocking. I mean genuinely, gasp inducing, out loud guffawing, jaw dropping, really shocking. There is something on pretty much every page that is worse than anything the writers of the Thick of It could invent. Many other reviewers have picked up on particular standout moments, but mine was the plan to topple Tom Watson just before 2018 conference, a plan that failed because Claudia Webbe was late. Or that Andrew Fisher was upset that Corbyn had a nickname for Seamus Milne, but not him. None of the personalities come out of it particularly well, the accounts of bullying and fawning around the leader are particularly toe curling. 

The whole narrative of the story is built around a number of clumsily enacted catastrophes - internal division, anti-semitism, Labour Live festival, Salisbury, Brexit, parliamentary chicanery and the General Election campaign of 2019. At all points Corbyn's lack of leadership qualities make Labour's dysfunction worse.  All you learn is entirely consistent with the prickly old man we sometimes saw on the news, slamming car doors and demanding of interviewers - "can I finish?"

If behind the scenes at "the Project" resembled a bunch of bickering children, you are left to wonder who the adults were. Diane Abbott seems strangely absent, Len McCluskey lurks around every corner, but one figure emerges as a tragi-hero, John McDonnell. He at least recognises that the left have a moment to make a mark and achieve power, but seems powerless to stop their worst instincts from consuming themselves. I don't actually think there is a great deal between him and his leader on policy issues. It seems amazing to me still that much of the left chose to dig in so damagingly on anti-Semitism. Having put to one side their lifelong opposition to nuclear weapons, Irish republicanism, NATO and nationalising the commanding heights of the economy, it's peculiar that they seemed so militant about this one issue. McDonnell seems to understand the need to triangulate and pick the battles that can be won. It's not "tittle tattle" that caused a serious fracture in the relationships, but a defining characteristic of a politics that wants to stand up for a principle, and one that wants to shape society according to those principles. 

This is a fair, balanced and detailed account that tries to work out what went wrong, from their high watermark of hubris at Glastonbury in 2017 to Keir Starmer thrashing their candidate in the 2020 leadership election. It has a level of introspection that all failed political projects have to subject themselves to, including the one I was briefly involved in that gets a mention, The Independent Group for Change. By overly focusing on the Westminster and LOTO operations and less on the grass roots from where this movement came, it is open to the criticism that it only tells half a story. I don’t think that’s grounds to dismiss this work though, because with leadership comes a deep responsibility to do what you promised. Another history would show how Corbynism inspired hope, then dashed it, across the Labour Party in different local branches and constituency parties, and how that played out on social media. But that would be a different book, albeit one that would still include stories about Claudia Webbe. As John Harris says in his peerless review of this, and another account by someone I don't like, the one group of people that doesn't get a look in, or a hearing, are the voters who were turned off by what was evidently a wholly unappealing rabble.

Postscript: this review by Stephen Bush in the New Statesman is also very good.

Lockdown blues

There was something about the whole country being locked down together that helped us feel we were part of a collective effort to do our bit.

Last week we got the news that one of our sons had been with a mate who'd tested positive. He felt a bit rough and had to get a test before going back to university, which came back positive. We got tested as well and were negative, but rules is rules and we have to isolate for two weeks. I'm not going to lie, it's been horrible. Much as I want to put a stoic face on it, I'm struggling with it. We can't leave the house, Max can't come home on his leave, everything is delivered, and I think the worse of it is that we were edging towards returning to work, college, walks and the gym. And I've had to pre-record from home our second Music Therapy programme, with embarrassingly disastrous consequences.  

But we are healthy and well. No symptoms, no real drama. As ever, Rachel is far more cheery than me and has raised our spirits. We are counting our blessings and very much looking forward to celebrating her birthday this week in a spirit of togetherness. This will pass and we will have a chippy tea to mark the end of our isolation next Friday.

Music Therapy on Tameside Radio

On Sunday nights from 9pm until 11pm me and my mate Neil Summers are going to be playing a few records and telling stories on a new show, Music Therapy on Tameside Radio 103.6 FM. It's a breezy mix of the new and the familiar, designed to end the weekend on a blissed out way. I think of Neil as my far more clued up younger brother, nudging me to appreciate richer, deeper and more exciting music. There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure in our book, just an open mind and a love of great music.

You can listen to us live here. We'll probably get round to setting up a website with mini features, extended interviews and playlists. Possibly.

Massive thanks to Chris Bird and Andy Hoyle at Quest Media for giving us the chance.