Manchester policy, forward motion and our new handbook

We launched our new book at work last week - Transforming Policy and Research. It's a handbook to help academics navigate the way towards having a positive impact on policy. Loads of researchers I know do amazing work, far better than the kind of thinking that comes out of political parties and many conventional think tanks. Our task is to help them translate that knowledge, those insights, into a place where they can co-produce positive outcomes.

In that spirit, I invited along Elizabeth Mitchell from the policy team at Manchester City Council to speak to the audience. I'm sure many people listening to her insights and noting down her examples of good practice would have been thinking the same as me: why has this fantastically bright public servant committed her career to Manchester? I'm sure she would thrive in any central government ministry. The answer lies behind the premise of the question, I suppose. Why wouldn't you want to be in Manchester? Even with the punishing budget cuts and the apparent slowing of the progress of devolution, the city, the Combined Authority and the associated institutions are innovative and dynamic places to be. Much more so than a national government paralysed by Brexit.

In the latest issue of our bi-annual MetroPolis magazine, I touch upon these themes and the thought I keep coming back to is 'ambition'. It happens to be one of the pillars of the University strategy, which is in itself an example of that successful forward motion that good strategies are supposed to give you. There would be no point doing any of this if we were howling into the darkness. But we believe we have an opportunity to be part of a movement of policy enablers in our civic universities. It also coincided with the release of a sparkling new website, which rightly emphasises our key themes: public service reform, building a caring society, and creating future cities. We've also launched a section for Policy Thinkers, to broaden out our community of thinkers and practitioners.

Taken together, it's more than just a handbook, but a toolkit, a set of resources and structures that can bring together agents for change and better policy. It's also a work in progress, blissfully.

Brexit breakdown: 14 days that shook politics | Anywhere but Westminster

Ah well. He got the bit at the Change UK Manchester rally where the tech broke down. He included my speech in it. And he said, it's not bad, but it's not Frimley. Sums up the campaign pretty well really.

I always enjoy John Harris' analysis of where we are politically and socially.

A Life in Thirty-Five Boxes – Dave Haslam book event

Me and Joe really enjoyed Dave Haslam’s launch of his first mini-book last night, a series which he has dubbed ‘Art Decades’. The first mini-book in the ‘Art Decades’ series will be ‘A Life in Thirty-Five Boxes: How I Survived Selling My Record Collection’.

Partly I think it's because I always love listening to Dave when he tells stories. I've probably heard him in this kind of setting more than I've heard him DJ now, which is a testament to his own successful second act - I won't prolong that metaphor, too many have. We also heard about some of the slightly surprising things collected by his guest panellists; poet Tony Walsh, musician/artist Naomi Kashiwagi, and DJ/producer Mark Rae, including a crazy story about a trip to Chernobyl.

The blurb for the event explained how the core of ‘A Life in Thirty-Five Boxes’ is an exploration of our impulse to collect - particularly our emotional attachment to vinyl - and the notion that every record collection reflects our life story. Dave tracks how his own collection built up, how others have fed their obsessive collecting, including the man who tracks down multiple versions of Light My Fire by Jose Feliciano. It takes us all the way to the moment Dave decides to sell all his vinyl to DJ Seth Troxler, and waves goodbye to thirty-five boxes of records as they’re loaded into the back of a van.

He talks a lot about giving up the inheritance his vinyl collection represented - he was going to pass it to his children - but feared the tragedy of it scattering and breaking up. It reminded me of the parable of the rich man getting in to the kingdom of heaven, and it being harder than a camel passing through the eye of a needle. I have always taken that to be less of a denunciation of wealth, more of a statement that you can't take any of it with you, so give it back with love.

As is often the case, the Q+A flushed out some important points. Not least, the triumph of nostalgic revisionism. Dave touched on it in a challenging essay he wrote in 2015, here:

"The city authorities habitually give a nod to Factory Records, but I’m not sure they quite get important parts of the Factory story. The Hacienda wasn’t a disco version of the Trafford Centre. The Factory label, the club, those around and involved – from musicians to video makers – produced culture. It wasn’t an exercise in consuming but creating. In addition, like Shelagh Delaney, not only were they forced into action by despair at the cultural provision of the time, Factory operated outside the margins. One of the richest chapters of Manchester’s cultural history began when the lads who went on to form Joy Division began to meet up in a makeshift rehearsal room above the Black Swan Pub, near Weaste Bus Depot.

"This self-organised, independent activity still happens of course; actors, crews, artists, printmakers, musicians, freelancers hiring pub functions rooms, meeting wherever and whenever, trying to bring ideas to life. Isn’t it time these people were celebrated and encouraged?"

Since then I feel the city has become even more of a shallow memorial to the misunderstood past of Madchester. I like to think Dave's writing and his new publishing model is a subtle nod to how to use our past to tick on to the future, but as we walked out there was a poster for another Hacienda night (at Gorilla).

Viva Marseille

We had a tremendous time in Marseille. It all came about after meeting a lovely French bloke who worked in the hotels world. We wanted to go away in early June to somewhere neither of us had been before. He recommended Hotel Dieu in Marseille. What a glorious surprise the whole city was. As a port city you expect a certain grit, but it was nothing like as rough as I feared. In many ways it felt like somewhere that is changing and modernising, while trying hard to preserve its edge, without having the swish elan of Nice and Cannes, which I've been to many times before.

We took in the sights on the first day - Notre Dam, the harbour, Mucem. Then we headed for the small coastal town of Cassis on day two.

Getting around, as it is in so many European cities, was easy and safe.

To quote my favourite film, one ought to have a room with a view on the first visit. As you can see, we certainly had that. But we also treated ourselves to a real quality hotel, way above what we'd normally go for. Poached eggs at breakfast will never be same now we've had them cooked by a Michelin starred chef.

The only disappointment was Boullabaise. We felt obliged to try it, but fish soup is fish soup and wasn't worth the tourist premium we got fleeced with.

We have a few other European cities in our sites for visits soon. Recommendations welcome.

A recap on some great telly I've watched

Riviera, a real guilty pleasure

As we're getting stuck into the long awaited second series of Killing Eve, we're also going to have to face the inevitable sense of loss that will follow it when it ends. Just as we have following a ton of different series and boxed sets over the last year. Here's a bit of a flavour of my tastes.

Fleabag was as good as any comedy I've seen in the last 10 years. Very sharp, very well acted. The scene with Kirsten Scott Thomas was mesmerising and if anything the second series took it all to a new level.

By contrast, much as I was swept along by the last series of Line of Duty it was more miss than hit. Great one liners, good pace, but at times it seems to have disappeared up its own firmament.

Bodyguard was better and proved you can still create those moments of collective gasping both in the social media second screen, but back around the table at work on Monday.

The Walking Dead managed to redeem itself in Season 9, the time jump was a bad idea which betrays quite how over ambitious the whole enterprise is becoming. It's good that it seemed to have broken something of the cycle of plot lines and places. Conversely, the bridging of TWD with the alternate Fear The Walking Dead season 4 didn't work with Morgan walking across four states, and somehow managed to make a series with sublime promise lapse back into the ridiculous. Season 5 looks somehow better.

A strange zombie apocalypse diversion on Netflix was Black Summer, which was particularly brutal and fatalistic about the ability of society to cope with a shock like this. It ended on a bleak and very final kind of note, which strangely felt like a relief.

The algorithim on Netflix has picked up on my fascination for end of days apocalyptic drama. I was disappointed we can't seem to get hold of season 3, the final one, of alien invasion nightmare Colony. The first two were good enough and well put together.

Danish bio-disaster The Rain was better with subtitles than with dubbing into English. It was also in danger of running out of ideas as much as spending a meagre budget on limited locations and bad CGI. Still, decent enough and a similar evil biotech corporation loomed large in Sky Atlantic's Hanna, which had its moments.

I felt violated by the extreme violence of The Punisher and irritated by ITV's Paranoid, though surprised to see they shot some of it at my workplace.  I'm one episode in to the new season of Black Mirror, having been drawn in and spellbound by the intensity of the two mates getting carried away by a VR game in Striking Vipers. Warped.

A really guilty pleasure was a double series binge of Sky Atlantic's Riviera. The younger me was transfixed by Lena Olin when I saw first saw her as Sabina in the 1988 adaptation of my student era favourite novel Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She stole the show then in her bowler hat, and again five years later as the ultimate femme fatale mob boss in Romeo is Bleeding. As the matriarch Irina Clios she also dominates every scene with a look, or a glance, in a lavish and preposterous romp that takes us back to the glory days of Dallas and Dynasty. And I spotted Doug Barrowman in the first episode.

I've written here in October 2018 about my penchant for sharply written Australian noir and a couple of series have capitalised on the wave with well-delivered follow-ups. The third season of Wanted was another step up in drama and plot twist and I do hope they are heading towards my old home of Perth for season 4. Canberra set Secret City took the geo-political stakes even higher in the follow up as my favourite new hero, Harriet Dunkley, made a seamless transition from journalist to jailbird to political SpAd.

A constant of that whole genre has been the corruption and laziness of the entire Australian police force. When I go back, please remind me not to be a victim of crime. I've seen the two Wolf Creek films with the villainous and sadistic Mick Taylor stalking unsuspecting backpackers and torturing them, I don't know if I'm quite ready for two entire series of more of this.

Similarly, Welsh noir took a dark turn with Hidden, which was gracefully acted and touched on the same unseen Wales, as I said here, that parts of Hinterland did so successfully.

Finally, as if we needed reminding of the incredible raw acting talent of Stephen Graham and the awesome combination of him being directed by Shane Meadows then Channel 4's The Virtues hit you like a steam train. Graham's depiction of lead character Joe wasn't even the stand-out, though him falling off the wagon was horrifically powerful. But Meadows seems to draw out a whole range of quite incredible close up, raw, believable and underacted performances. Helen Behan as Anna and Niamh Algar as Dinah brought such sensitivity and feeling to a disturbing and haunting storyline. I watched this a few days after finally seeing Meadows' bleak and captivating 2004 film Dead Man's Shoes. Sometimes telly can be like a snack to the full on glory of a sit down spread that a feature film offers, and sometimes it is a real treat.

The need for Change - a political howl

I don't know where we go from here.

I don't know what's going to happen in our broken political system.

I don't know what's going to break the deadlock over Brexit, or whether it can be stopped or not. I want it to be stopped, but I don't know whether we can or not.

What I do know is that the Tories are going to install Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and that Jeremy Corbyn is still the leader of the opposition. That is not an acceptable choice to lead our country.

What I also know is that I have never felt as at home politically as I did amongst the Change UK candidates and activists when I stood in the European election in May. Nor have I felt as inspired. I know we got absolutely creamed at the polls and that the experience wasn’t ultimately what I expected. I’m also disappointed at the swift break up of the parliamentary group, the shambles with the name and I do seriously wonder what can realistically carry on.

Let’s be clear. Those brave MPs who quit Labour over the toxic anti-semitism, the fudge over Brexit and the unpalatable state of the party were right to do so. Nothing has changed. It wasn’t premature to do so, something had to give. It was also disappointing that more didn’t follow. I genuinely don’t know what those MPs and members who oppose Corbyn expect to happen.

Taking it all in good faith, I did my bit and walked towards the sound of the battle. It was the usual rough and tumble, but also I believe we raised the Europe issue on another platform and LibDems and Greens reaped the rewards. Fair play to them, they worked hard for it.

But what happened in the locals and the Euros hasn't changed the mess in Westminster. The next question is what kind of ambitious realignment in the mainstream of politics is possible. If it can happen, then where might the different remnants of Change UK go next? And what kind of berth do the Liberal Democrats represent? The Liberal Democrats need an injection of serious political ambition, not to take a few seats back and to win a few hung councils, but to provide a serious government that isn’t Johnson or Corbyn, which a majority of the British people are horrified by. Maybe that's what Chuka Umunna thinks will happen now. The general in search of his army.

For those that have left, personally, I think it might have been worth waiting to see what the longer view was from a larger body of activists, candidates and the collective group, rather than to act individually, or to just walk away now, but you can’t fault them for acting swiftly and politics is often about the gut feel.

A whole series of blunders contributed to the disappointing campaign and plenty of other people have commented on all of that. Not least the leaked strategy note that seemed to regard the LibDems as an irritating irrelevance, ready for the taking. I’ve always felt they have been key to any new entity, but that culturally they need that injection of ambition and to have the confidence to get over the coalition government experience. My own frustrations with their local opportunism have also betrayed that lack of courage to stand up for what they believe. And yet when they do? Well, the result was clear.

I've reached out to the Liberal Democrats I know personally and have enjoyed some robust and forthright conversations.

But I feel two things at the moment, an urgency to act, and a deeper one not to waste time on a callow gesture. The alternatives just aren’t there. I recognise that a Westminster led group always had a better chance of building something through the centre and taking activists with it. The Renew party has attempted to build from the grass roots and got 45 votes in the Peterborough by-election.

So, it's going to be decision time soon.

Alice Webb - on leading the BBC in the North, digital change and what makes a TV hit

Alice Webb showing me round the BBC

I've always really enjoyed interviewing people in positions of leadership and at the sharp end of change. So you can imagine how pleased I was to be meeting Alice Webb, Director of BBC Children's and Education, and to have it presented so well in the edition of Met Magazine.

We covered a lot of ground, including leadership, digital change, the North, Netflix, The Bodyguard, Killing Eve and loads more.

You can listen to a podcast of the interview here, and a web page with the written feature, here.

There's a rich range of feature articles in this edition of the magazine, including a profile on Carol Ann Duffy, who has just ended her tenure as the UK's Poet Laureate, a piece covering employers’ views on the impact of degree apprenticeships, good work on research being done within the University to reinvigorate town centres, a feature on Manchester’s club culture of the 1980s and 1990s, and on the ecology projects academics are involved in around the world.

It is important that people know what we are doing and the impact we have, so a magazine is a powerful platform to profile such stories so colleagues can share them and demonstrate all the ways in which we change lives for the better, and how we shape our world.

My interview with Mark Garner of ManCon about Change UK

Manchester rejects hate, and why I'm for Change

Where we are today matters.
It certainly matters to me.
I first arrived around this very part of the city in 1985 as a fresh faced teenage Lancashire lad at the University of Manchester.
I was the first person in my extended family to go to university – but not the first to leave home. Grandads, uncles and cousins have put on a uniform and served their country in the British Army, as nephews, cousins and my own son have done since.
Anyway, I popped out for a pint of milk one Sunday morning from my halls around the corner and I walked into a riot in All Saints.
On one side of Oxford Road were Irish Republicans, egged on by the useful idiots of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and others who should have known better, on the other were the National Front. It was a tense, ugly and nasty encounter. The like of which I hadn’t witnessed before beyond skirmishes at the school gate and on the football terraces.
But it was part of a shaping of my political education. A mob politics that disgusted me. Frightened me.
It was the start of a move from dogma to dialogue, from problem seeking to problem solving.
So I have happy formative memories of here too. I was told I wasn't up to being an academic as my writing style was too journalistic.
I took the hint and fast forward 15 years later in 2001 and I find myself back in this very building as a business journalist to interview the boss of one of the region’s most interesting tech businesses. Being excited by the challenge of change, of new high tech jobs being created.
Because that's another reason why where we are right now also matters for us today.
This building which was built in the year of my birth 1966, forged in the white hot heat of Harold Wilson’s technological revolution – just down the road from where Rolls met Royce and where two scientists isolated graphene and won a Nobel prize for physics. An optimistic time.
Because I mean it when I say this matters today.
We are on the Oxford Road Corridor – funded by the European Regional Development Fund – good work, supporting infrastructure, learning and job creation.
Supporting scientists, like Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, like so many, standing on the shoulders of giants of science like Dalton, Rutherford and Turing. They are European Union citizens, collaborating, in many cases, under the auspices of European science programmes.
That’s the Manchester I fell in love with. The city I have devoted much of my working life to advancing. A Manchester that is welcoming, European, innovative and energetic.
But like I was on that autumn morning in 1985, I’m once again frightened by thuggery and the grim politics of far left the and the far right and frankly the bits where they all blur into one.
The politics of easy answers, cheap shots and hate.
You don't need me to remind you what happens when hate comes to a city like this. Tomorrow we will be remembering where we were two years ago when we heard the news about how they tried to blow apart our wonderful, tolerant, united city.
Manchester proved then it is better than this.
Britain’s better than this.
When Britain voted to leave I was gutted.
But I wanted to commit myself to something to make right what had gone very badly wrong.
My day job is to make the university I work for a civic university. Somewhere that is accessible to people from communities who don’t have the advantages, the social capital and the opportunities.
But I wanted to be part of a political movement too.
Our broken politics just stokes the fires of the division all around us.
Faith against faith, north v south, so called Somewheres versus Anywheres. This mythical mobile elite. That’s not how I see it, not how my family see it.
The only people who benefit from that division or the successors to those street thugs.
I want to stand on a platform to rebuild, reshape and CHANGE our politics. CHANGE the civic conversation.
This matters.
This campaign matters.
I was proud of my friend Ann Coffey when she left Labour.
And I’ve been prouder still of my fellow candidates in this election.
From Carlisle to Chester, from Crosby Beach to Colne. We’ve done our very best and done the team proud.
I’m proud to be a candidate. Proud to be in this team.
Because it matters.

(my speech at the Change UK pre-election rally, May 21, 2019, Manchester Technology Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester).

How to be happy at work - a podcast discussion during mental health awareness week

Wellbeing in the workplace can drive business success and yet stress and anxiety account for millions of lost working days each year. To mark #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek one of the Manchester partners of Grant Thornton, Paul Scully, joined a fascinating and challenging discussion with Dawn Moore, HR director of Morgan Sindall Construction and Infrastructure and Professor Marc Jones of Manchester Metropolitan University about better ways of working. I was delighted to chair the discussion and share a few thoughts along the way.

Change our country - Change our politics

I'm standing in the upcoming European elections for Change UK - The Independent Group. We have an amazing opportunity to create a unifying force in politics.

There was no plan for Britain to leave the EU, there was no way for the different false promises of brexit to be fulfilled, it is a symbol of our broken politics.

I wasn't initially convinced of the case for a new referendum on our future relationship with the EU. But it's so clear that parliament can't find a way through, so the government should have the courage to put whatever deal they can pull together to a binding public vote, with the option to Remain on the ballot paper. That way, it is clear what kind of Leave deal is being offered and we can therefore make a decision with far more clarity about what we want our future relationship with the European Union to be.

But there's something else worth fighting for. The capture of Labour by the hard left, and the marginalisation of progressive traditions in the Conservative party screams for an alternative. I've wanted this to happen for a long time. This is a great moment and I look forward to campaigning for the new politics.

 

The inside track on Game of Thrones

Now that I've made up for six years of Game of Thrones not being in my life, I thought I ought to share this fabulous day from earlier this year.

Our careers and employability team got Maisie Williams (Arya Stark from Game of Thrones) to come and talk to the students. She’s set up a new venture called Daisie - a sort of a social network to connect creative people with one another to encourage co-operation and collaboration on projects. Anyway, someone had to host the event and ask the questions, which was a great experience. 

She also answered loads of great probing questions from students on how to keep going, how to raise money for a tech start-up and lots about the final series of GOT.

The coverage on the University website is here.

The EU flag flies in Marple - and why we get the wrong politicians

A mate who works for an MP told me over a drink the other day how much anger he gets whenever he picks up the phone. Over Brexit? I asked. "Everything," he said. Housing, parking, fly tipping, schools, cuts, immigration, everything you can think of, and plenty more you couldn't.

I'm also reading Isabel Hardman's excellent book Why We Get The Wrong Politicians - a well written and incisive gallop through the problems of our failing political system. Politics is broken, but there is still much virtue in the intentions of people who work for our politicians, as well as among the much maligned political class too.

With that in mind, I popped into the office of William Wragg MP in Marple this afternoon. I thanked his staff for all they do, keeping democracy ticking over in the best way they can. They'd arrived at work recently to find that someone had stuck Bollocks to Brexit stickers all over the windows. At best that's a pain the backside and it will have taken them a while to scrape them off, distracting them from whatever else they do. At worst it must be very unsettling in the current climate. I made the point that I fully support the views of the people who want to resist this insane Brexit and that I'm massively disappointed in William's stance on this issue, but I'm sorry for the inconvenience that this has put his staff through. They seemed OK, and grateful of a visitor who didn't want to fight.

I did so also because I did "like" a tweet that pointed out the sticker stunt, but more so because whoever did it also hung an EU flag from the sign above the door. I thought that was funny. There has to be space to disagree well, not to escalate every slight and every action into a massive outrage on social media. But these are angry, edgy times.

The best food in Stockport

Like most people who live in the outlying areas of Stockport, we don't actually go into the town centre that much. Frankly, there's very little reason to.

When we do it's for a very specific purpose, a particular shop, or the excellent Light Cinema. In fact, that is an example of a building that is so much better from the inside than the hideous carbuncle of an exterior. I'd go so far as to say it's the best cinema I've ever been to.

We popped in to Stockport today to drop Louis at work and thought we'd check out the new Produce Hall and the work that's been done to the area around the market. It has definitely improved. Today being Monday, everywhere was closed, so we'll have to have another go later in the week. But from a pure place making perspective, the progress is really noticable and we've seen enough to make us want to come back.

What it did do however was send our fizzing tastebuds in the direction of Tyros, a sensational Lebanese cafe tucked away just off Tiviot Dale.

All three of us had wraps, lamb and two kinds of chicken. The salad extras are something else though; carrots, potato salads, possibly the best hummus outside of the Middle East. The service is not just friendly, but really enthusiastic for food, the love oozes out. And it's just such good value too - £5.50 for a wrap and two sides is incredible, really.

One fabulous previous visit was to treat Paul Lawrence before he left Stockport for a new job in Edinburgh. Paul is someone with real vision and a sense of how to build a place and all the good things now happening were started on his watch.

I've heard great things about Where The Light Gets In, but also that it's a lot of money for something I probably wouldn't appreciate. I like my food, but my palate isn't delicate, my choices unrefined. I value hearty every time.

So, there's more exploring to do, but when it comes to the town centre, I'll reserve a verdict on the Produce Hall for another day, because I've had it confirmed for now that Tyros remains the best food in Stockport town centre.

Confidence is a preference for the habitual routine for match winning Rovers known as Fist Pump!

We made a late decision to head for Nottingham Forest today to watch our merry men.

A week ago I wouldn’t have backed us to get anything from another team lolling about in mid-table, like Stoke City, with a newish manager and an eye on next season.

Something clicked in midweek against Derby County though; as soon as the ball flicked over Joe Rothwell’s heel and into his accelerating path, his control connected with his decision making faculties and he clipped the ball deftly into the corner. On such margins are games won, as are tap ins and lucky bounces.

That being Rothwell’s debut goal in a season of fits and starts was significant and it made him literally fit to start this afternoon and, I say this confidently in hindsight, certain to score. His goal came in a spell of intense pressure when he found himself within the range and lashed in the sweetest of finishes. He wouldn’t have had the confidence to even try that had he not lost his goal scoring cherry on Tuesday.

We know that Player of the Season shoe-in Danny Graham scores when he wants, and he certainly wanted it again today. But after some delightful twists and the deft drop of the shoulder, everyone in the ground expected Bradley Dack to stretch the net. At that moment he was everything I ever wanted him to be, but for minutes afterwards I was ready to announce on Instagram that Bradley and I were no longer in a relationship.

I hope that miss doesn’t knock his confidence in the way his other recent setbacks have. It shouldn’t, because Dack was immense in that second half. His trickery, his intelligent passing out to Adam Armstrong, and his offering of an option to Corry Evans and Lewis Travis, were everything we missed last week.

Rovers conceded 19 fouls today. 19. Only a few of them were what you’d call industrial challenges, the kind of roughing up we frankly don’t do enough of. No, they were what our Louis calls “Conway fouls”: forced collisions by players placing themselves in harm’s way. When we do it, Charlie Mulgrew often obliges with a free kick. Forest had one shot on target out of 22, which was our other fortune today.

So, the baby elephant in the room remains Ben Brereton. I watched him on the bench in the second half and he was like a coiled spring. When he finally bounced onto the pitch he was more like Bambi on ice, unable to challenge, trap, or control, let alone score a goal against his old team and lessen the burden of that price tag. He had the nuisance presence of a goalie coming up for a corner in the 98th minute; opponents don’t really know what to do with him, neither do his team mates, more to the point. It must be unbearable to be Ben, but I can see the future opening up for him once he’s scored, the trouble is there are no easy games in the Championship, with the possible exception of relegated Bolton at home on Easter Monday. Too easy?

I thought that Dack miss, and a fluffed one-on-one by Rothwell, would cost us. It didn’t. And I’m reluctant to be overly critical of our players. They take it to heart and change behaviour as a result. Since some wag on Twitter called Elliott Bennett “a fist pumping Liam Feeney”, the trademark celebration has vanished, though so too have the wins, to be fair. He put a shift in today, even some rough stuff when needed. It was good to have that back at the end. Very good indeed.

Getting to Ewood is an effort, and today was the day I snapped

It was quite an effort to get to Ewood on time for the kick off today. We even rang ahead to put in our order with the peerless Leavers Bakery on Bolton Road, picking up and then wolfing down our motley collection of steak, potato and butter as the whistle blew to start the game against Stoke City in the glorious Lancashire sunshine. "Thanks, love, see you next season," said the lady in Leavers, reminding us that there isn't another Saturday home game.

Next season, eh?

It seems she isn't the only one thinking ahead to August. We certainly are, and with some dread. I also get the impression that's where Tony Mowbray's head is. Those references to 50 points, the talk of a transition, the purchases of players he doesn't use, wrapping them up for a special occasion.

To be blunt, come August, the only players who played any part today that I'd be happy seeing start, I mean, really happy in the sense that I'd be gutted if they left, I could count on one hand and in descending order of affection: Darragh Lenihan, Lewis Travis, Ryan Nyambe, Adam Armstrong,  and at a push, David Raya. I feel dreadfully disloyal thinking of a team without Charlie Mulgrew and Danny Graham, the absolute bedrocks and saviours of this season, but frankly, something isn't working and they are of an age. Of my favoured five, they have the potential to become top, top footballers at the highest level, they have so much more to give our club. But in a sport dominated by agents, how long before these lads start getting the word that they don't need to be struggling among this dross?

Like at Sheffield Wednesday last month, I was most disappointed for Joe Rothwell, who once again huffed and puffed without ever seizing his moment in the absence of Bradley Dack. There's a good player in there that can have an impact, but I just don't think he's a clever player in the way that Dack or Travis is. When a loose ball fell to him early on and he scuffed a clear chance, it betrayed a total lack of confidence. Or that he's just not as good as I hoped he was.

I know it's a predictable siren cry for fans to demand they try the kids when other options don't work, and clearly they aren't, but how much might John Buckley and Lewis Travis have enjoyed pitting their wits against Stoke's Joe Allen (the Welsh Xavi) and Bojan (an actual Barca prodigy)?

On the whole I didn't think Stoke were much cop, but then seeing us lose to teams that fit that description has been the story of this season. Their young manager clearly has a different idea about what kind of team he wants next term, but they're seeing this one out with a bit more grit. A rare away win seems to prove my fear that all teams lacking confidence need is a game against Blackburn Rovers.

Which brings me back to my constant niggle. Once again we seem to adapt tactics to the style of play of the opposition and let them settle in to how they want the game to go. The way Amari Bell slows up play when we have a chance to break is baffling. And if the idea that playing League One quality bruisers in the middle would give us grit, then sadly the manager has a very different view of the abilities and possibilities offered up by Bennett, Evans and Smallwood, and of why Harrison Reed warrants a place on the bench, but not to play any part.

My patience snapped today. It snapped with the players I've mentioned just now. It snapped with Mowbray too. It takes some effort for us to get to Ewood, especially as there are other things I need to do on a Saturday to make it all work, both before and after. As I sit here now, it's been a long day. And yes, of course I question whether it's worth it. Because frankly, Blackburn's a long way to go for a pie.

Business awards are now a joke

Trophy shelf at now liquidated Noir Agency

A couple of months ago I did a talk at Alliance Manchester Business School about the challenging environment for the business media.
Before that I'd written something, here, about how no-one in the press seemed to feel any kind of duty to police the boundaries of the business community.

Most of the reaction to that was that it was a bit of an enjoyable whinge about how things were so much better back in my day. Sure, I fuelled that with a few tales and I enjoyed swapping memories with a few former muckers and occasional rivals.

That wasn't my intention though. It's much more serious than a nostalgia fuelled rant. It's about the reputation of Manchester as a serious city.

I can't remember the last time I went to a business awards ceremony. Actually, I can. It was the 2017 Business Desk Awards where I presented an award as my employer sponsored the large business category. But before that? I really can't remember.

Since I stopped being involved I've given them a swerve. I also refuse to be a judge, in case anyone was thinking of asking me.

Let me say one more thing before I say what I'm about to offload. Running a business is hard. I couldn't do it. In fact I haven't. I've worked with incredibly capable people and I've seen at close hand the weight of the decisions they make. I'll say something else. The last decade has actually created a phenomenally resilient, agile, occasionally ruthless, but actually quite a brilliant generation of entrepreneurs. The fact that the turmoil of Brexit hasn't sunk the whole of the British entrepreneurial class is a testament to how good they actually are.

They deserve gold medals.

Instead they get the devalued currency of the current crop of business awards.

I'm going to pass no comment on the story of Noir, a digital agency, except to share a few facts I've discovered this evening, ignoring the off-the-scale boasting on social media and their own website. 

They incorporated in September 2016.

They filed for liquidation in March 2019, owing £62,000 to creditors, including about half that amount to HMRC. 

In the intervening period they filed micro-entity accounts.

They won the following awards: ‘Best Brand Agency’ at The Talk of Manchester Awards, ‘Startup Agency of the Year’ at UK Fast's Digital Entrepreneur Awards, as well as being listed in YENA’s Future 15.

On February the 22nd the Noir Agency tweeted a story about what winning at the Manchester Evening News Business of the Year Awards meant to them.

Seven days before that on the 15th of February, the director of the business, Anthony Logan, had signed a legal document confirming that the business was bust. Papers were then filed at Companies House on the 21st of March.

They are facts.

Pretty much everything else I've read and learned is subjective, and open to any kind of interpretation, including clients, where the staff went for an awayday, where their offices were. It's impossible at this stage to dissect fact from fiction. And that's a problem, clearly. The people who've lost money here, staff who lost jobs, HMRC who get stiffed again, suppliers getting left to make up the loss of income, all of that is bad enough.

But the multiple award wins represent something worse. The triumph of style over content. The readiness to hand over awards to a business built on nothing. What checks did anyone make? Or did they just admire the swagger? It's become a feeding frenzy, a cycle of lies. The emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

I look at this nonsense now as a parent. Would I want one of my sons to be working for people like this? Oh, but they're award-winning, they must be good.

I came across another awards event recently where one winner had only been in business for a month.
If you care about standards in the business community and what our city represents then you should make a conscious decision today to stop going to awards events and paying the stupid amount of money for a ticket. You should not enter awards, you should refuse to judge awards, stop putting them on your own branding, you shouldn't sponsor them, support them, or give them any credibility whatsoever.

This is the equivalent of a major doping scandal in the Olympic Games. Except there's no governing body, just the credibility afforded to the competitions by those who patronise them. Only if decent people boycott these discredited, ludicrous charades will they be put out of their misery. Trust me, this would be an act of mercy.

If you are as tired of all the hate as me, choose love

Since when did you have to pick an ugly side in this culture war? The anger, the demands, the talk of civil war, uprising, hate and “yebbut” and “whataboutery”. It is possible to be sickened and saddened by Christchurch, Paris, Manchester and Sandy Hook.

You can also find it appalling that girls were groomed and abused by gangs of men from the same ethnic group, without becoming a racist. Ask Nazir Afzal, who prosecuted them.

It’s also possible to want Brexit and not be a "thick gammon racist". People are allowed another opinion. It’s not mine, but snooty isn’t a good look either.

It’s the same with the supporters of my football team, and presumably many others too. Catastrophisers versus ‘happy clappers’. I just don’t bother worrying about what anyone else says anymore. My first thought after our recent defeats is not, ‘someone is being wrong on the BRFC Chat forum, I must correct them.’

And since I started industrial scale blocking on social media, life is happier. I don’t care about what someone else says on social media, or whether someone expresses insufficient outrage for one atrocity, but not the other. It’s not about them, it’s about the innocent people going about their lives murdered in that moment of hate.

I’m on an anger diet for Lent. It’s better that way. Trust me.

I think I made a terrible mistake

In order to unwind during my campaigning in the 2015 General Election I started binge watching The Walking Dead. There was something raw and existential about a zombie apocalypse where rebuilding communities again was a constant struggle.

Like many things I did that year, I think I made a wrong choice.

I should have got stuck into Game of Thrones instead.

The Walking Dead has got stuck in a loop of ridiculous bad characters (The Governor, various roadside baddies, Negan, even Rick Grimes stopped making sense) and all played out in the same dull predictable location, despite supposedly having crossed two states. I said at the end of Season 7, here, that the structure had got dreadfully predictable, only the breaks, the premieres and the finale episodes had anything significant happen in them. It got to the point that after three pretty ropey seasons, I was on the brink of giving up for good. However, much as I've been transfixed by a huge leap in quality in season 9, almost everything new, terrifying and surprising about The Walking Dead owes a debt to Game of Thrones. In the season 9 finale, we were pretty much teased that Winter is Coming. Even the walkers in GoT are better than the Walking Dead, and that's meant to be the actual point.

While both series have drawn heavily from original source material, Game of Thrones is clearer a far superior show. The cast, the locations, the scripts, the tension, the high politics and even the moments of humour.

However, I know this now because the second stage of this terrible telly mistake is that I decided to catch up and so watched a 90 minute Game of Thrones summary and the very last episode of the last season. Partly it was after meeting Maisie Williams at an event I hosted earlier this year, but it was also after some fairly aggressive peer pressure at home.

About five minutes in to that final episode of Game of Thrones Season 7 and I realised that the whole package is better in every way and I have to say I am truly hooked. But, because I know what happens with the interweaving and over arching plots, I can’t correct my error by starting at the beginning because the surprise has gone. I'll enjoy season 8, the last one, no question. Bring it on. But I’ll literally never get that time back when I watched those lost episodes where nothing much happened between Rick Grimes and Negan and the Hilltop and the Kingdom. Never. But at least I never got into Lost.

Back in the pod - Cottonmouth Manchester

We recorded the first edition of the new format Cottonmouth Manchester podcast this month. I was chuffed to have been asked by Vaughan Allen, CEO of CityCo, and the pod host, to be one of two regular guests commenting on the news, Manchester culture, business and politics. I was doubly chuffed that alongside me would be Eve Holt, Chorlton councillor and social activist, and someone I've enjoyed working with over recent months.

The first one was pretty good, I think. I listen back and always judge it harshly, and know it could be even better. But now we know what's expected and what we're both like on the mic, then I think it's going to be great fun.

Deutschland 86 - the divided and the deplorable

We’ve just finished ten episodes of the excellent Deutschland 86, the follow up to 2016’s Cold War caper, Deutschland 83. Our hero Martin Rauch starts the series in exile in Angola, teaching German to kids, many of whom are displaced by a proxy war fought by Africans representing manipulative communist and western interests, until he is cornered back into action by his deplorable Aunt Lenora.

There are three great facets to the whole package; the acting, the script and the overall design. Because of the language (it’s in German), and the subtitles, I think I study the faces more and the expressions, the upper body leakage. The writing and story structure expertly manages to weave in real events from 1986; Chernobyl, AIDS, the Berlin nightclub bombing and the US retaliation in the bombing of Libya. But it also catches the style of the era very effectively with Mad Men style graphic titles, a sharp eye for punk fashions, especially in West Berlin, as well as big shoulder pads; all of which is complemented by snappy soundtrack, bookended each episode by the English version of Major Tom by Peter Schilling. Poignantly, just a few days after Mark Hollis died, up popped Talk Talk’s Such a Shame for the pivotal scene of one of the early African adventures.

This tale is darker, I’d say, than three years previous, where it bordered on Carry on Communism at times. The government of the DDR is even crueller and more corrupt than before. There’s certainly no playing it for laughs in how the Stasi treat the Fischer family.

Cynicism abounds and no-one really tells the truth about what they really want and what their purpose is. Everyone’s a bit of a shit, and a bit of dupe at the same time. The ending seems at once both hopeless and desperately sad, the ever presence of a wall that divides families, a people, a country. The hope however is in how their lives play out in Deutschland 89.

February in Berlin - no blog, no cry

February went by in a bit of a blur. So much so I didn't update this blog much. I've been a bit poorly, but nothing serious, I've moved offices at work and started a different role which I'm still getting my head around. I'm also moving into the writing phase on my MA and feel I'm wasting time if it's not about that. But there's something more. As I said on a Twitter thread today, I forever find myself stuck in a perpetual state of repetition. Whatever new outrage emerges about Brexit, Labour, the Catholic Church, Blackburn Rovers, Manchester or Marple, I feel I've said it all, or that all the things I care about seem to be combusting at once. 

Example.

I said in April 2018 that Labour can't get rid of anti-semitism, because Jeremy Corbyn doesn't understand the problem, or see it.

I said in September 2016 that I didn't fear a Labour split, but I actively want it to happen. That the party is wrong, nasty and lost to the far left. Same rules apply.

This month a group of Labour MPs did what I've been hoping they'd do and left the Labour Party. This is what I said in 2017 about a project of the centre, and it pretty much stands. 

And as for Blackburn Rovers - the underbelly has been exposed, which I was worried about in October, only now we can't seem to beat teams as ropey as Rotherham or Reading. More Travis, more Rothwell and a fit Lenihan should stop that rot.

Part of me is tempted to do what David Parkin does and knock out a reflective summary of the week on Friday. 

Anyway, one thing I did do in February was visit Berlin with Joe, Matt and Elliot. It was a great trip, a real living city. It had a vibe of London - but as if it was South Kensington, Westminster, The Mall, Hyde Park and six better versions of Shoreditch. We probably only scratched the surface as you'd expect in a two night break, but we did have the best burgers at a place called Burgermeister in Kruizberg and immersed ourselves in recent political history.

By a remarkable coincidence the new series of Deutschland 86 starts on Friday. Maybe that will get me writing about good telly again.

Be the editors of our own stories - notes for my talk at Alliance MBS today

I started out in journalism as I’ve carried on – unconventional, unorthodox and unprepared. But I was always convinced that what I was doing had a valid purpose.

I was talking to my friend Paul Unger about this the other day; business reporting comes with such a responsibility to the community you are part of. It also gives you such a solid grounding in the basics. Checking, summarising, thinking strategically, listening, understanding and checking again. You have to learn how to cut through the marketing hype of slick PR operations to get the real message. Paul reflected on how Giles Barrie built a powerful brand and platform at Property Week, that in turn spawned a cohort of top drawer media professionals working today. My generation in the media and broadcast press of the 1990s have also gone on to great things too, with the benefit of that firm foundation.

My first editor in the business press was a guy called John McCrone who was pretty tough on me. He had a reputation for having buried a company up to its neck in a computer leasing scandal. He held me to a high standard and marked my work ruthlessly, pushed me to ask the difficult questions and helped me more than I probably ever thanked him for.

You have to develop an empathy for the sector you cover, in turn you risk the inevitable accusation that you have ‘gone native’ and got too close to the people you are supposed to be covering. I’ve definitely done that. But then I just like smart people and can’t help but be impressed by them and their achievements.

In our heyday at Insider and at Television Week in the 1990s we made choices to get closer to our readers by ostracising, humiliating and hounding those who didn’t play by the rules. We were a player in that world, especially when we had a role in building up chancers and crooks as a result of our own previous naiveté.

I used to do this talk to journalism students at UCLAN about why the business press was a good route to a career. One of the attributes you’d pick up was versatility. Writing for different formats, producing events, analysing new sectors. The way things have shaped up since have multiplied that phenomena. But the one constant is knowing what to say, remain trusted by the people you need to be trusted by, and knowing when to say it.

I think of all of this as I browse through the regional media market now – Paul’s brand Place North West and the media site Prolific North are ambitious deep dives into the vertical sectors; they have events as well as streams of content.  The business news factories keep churning it out; the race to cut and paste. I get all of them daily and sometimes can’t distinguish whether I got a story from one or the other. But no media organisation can afford to ever be behind and irrelevant. As long as the print products can generate an advertising income no owner will cut off a revenue stream and take their chances on a digital market that’s been restructured to suit Google and Facebook.

A lack of relevance, a lack of reach and diminution of quality has created a greater drive towards creating your own content channels. Cut out the middleman. It’s created a situation here where our Met Magazine, produced at Manchester Metropolitan University, to a very high standard, is the method by which we get out key messages for local stakeholders.     

Sure, we do plenty of media work, our press office are great at it. This week we had ITV interviewing Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones on campus, and last year David Beckham came to visit. Our experts, despite what Michael Gove said, are still in demand and trusted. We also actively work with other regional players to make our contribution effective.

When I was asked to do a talk at Alliance MBS today on media and messaging, especially the impact of social media, part of me thought it would be a masterclass. A modern PR toolkit for engagement with press and media, star columnists, and influencers. Such is the level of my cynicism now, it would simply include:

• 1.     Have a great back story – childhood trauma
• 2.     Create a business in the tech sector, no need to be specific
• 3.     Have great offices in the city centre
• 4.     Social media presence – lots of hashtags #entrepreneur
• 5.     Offer to speak at conferences
• 6.     Become a mentor to young people - at a university, or an incubator
• 7.     Enter all the awards
• 8.     Get listed in the Insider 42 Under 42, and the BusinessCloud 35 under 35
• 9.     Speak out about charitable causes – homelessness is favourite at the moment, but it was sick white kids
• 10.  Hang out with Andy Burnham

And that, in many ways, highlights the problem.

Two tweets in the last week also showed to painful effect what is going on under the noses of the media that they are able to react to at best, but have actively encouraged at worst. Rachel Thompson from Manchester Digital admirably called out the companies around the city going into administration then opening up around the corner as if nothing happened, leaving creditors high and dry. The other was a tweet calling out a horrendous experience at an interview. But the explosion of interest in the issue here proved it goes way beyond the odd isolated incident. The media, business clubs, events organisers and social media have all been culpable in creating many of the characters responsible; not least promoting the cult of the individual, especially the alpha male, the all powerful corporate dictator, who has taken all the wrong lessons from Steve Jobs.

It comes back to another painful truth about entry into the media profession, as well as resources. So many new emerging journalists want the glory, the status, the attention. I know this. I enjoyed it all too. They want to be a face, a name. Helen Lewis of the New Statesman was commenting recently that graduates want to be columnists, like Owen Jones or Katie Hopkins, neither of whom I rate, by the way. But to have that right, it isn’t good enough to be a voice, loud, strident, opinionated, you have to be able to do the journalism. I’ve been interviewed by Jones and he was dreadful. He was a good speaker at a left wing rally, but he’s no researcher and certainly no kind of journalist.

The other modern new phenomena that I just don't get are so-called 'influencers'. I sat through a presentation recently on how they came about, who they were and how much money they make. I was staggered. We had a descriptor for them back in the day – the corrupt ones. Paying for a positive review is just bullshit frankly. And if you want to see where it ends up – watch the Fyre documentary on Netflix. A party organised by the worst people in the world for people who actually want to be like them. 

I keep hearing that regional journalism is dead. I tell you this, Jess Middleton-Pugh and Jennifer Williams are two of the best we've ever seen. Jess has built a powerful community around property and place making. Jen covers politics and social affairs for the MEN and is the best political journalist working in Britain today. Some are better known, some have better access. But none are as feared and respected like she is by those she covers.

But they’ve both made a choice – they have the same number of hours in the day as every other journalist, they hold truth to power. And yet, let's not forget, there are so many resources that journalists have available now that weren’t around when I started out.

The internet, for a start. Freedom of Information requests. The justice system can be just as impenetrable, but the Companies House website enables you to rely on more than your gut. Open source journalism and data scraping has been the driver behind Bellingcat; a new model of political gossip has created Guido Fawkes, poisonous as it sometimes is. Locally, a few have tried things, but they’re at the margins.

I’m heartened by the CIJ, the Centre for Investigative Journalism at Goldsmiths in London and by a young journalist called Jem Collins who has created Journo Sources. These tools, this spirit for collaboration makes me a little less worried about the future.

And the other incredible resource is access. Social media has flattened the hierarchies, it has created new ones, granted, but it has made the powerful more visible and more fallible. They can’t hide, they don’t hide. More people have that platform and frankly they are easier to track down and enter into dialogue.

My hunch is that we’ve created a vacuum here. A post-truth fake news cavern that is being filled up with a mixture of ice and shit. One melting, to be forgotten, and the other growing and creating a stink that threatens to choke us all.

That painfully needy streak I’ve always had manifested itself in me being flattered and impressed by attention. But how many of you genuinely have a regular dialogue with a journalist? Good journalists talk to people, they get stuff explained to them, tell their stories, share, explain, effectively get the experts to do a lot of the legwork. Same rules apply now. Don't look to the editor, be the editor, come together, share, support, and source. It’s a community endeavour. If we as a community created these monsters like your dodgy company flippers, like the idiot bullying business owner, then we have it within ourselves to do something about this.

I don’t know what the answers are. I can’t claim to know where this will go. But I can say with some certainty that if we don’t pull our fingers out and think very seriously about what we are doing, then we’ll have no-one left to cry to.

Massive Attack’s Mezzanine at Manchester Arena

If you took all the different individual elements of Massive Attack’s live show at Manchester Arena tonight then it’s an enticing cocktail of music, artistic and ideological challenge. It’s why I forked out a ton for a couple of briefs. I didn’t think I’d get Banksy/3D spray painting a mural on the concourse, and I didn’t *really* expect I’d get Mezzanine from soup to nuts, even if it was billed as the 20 year anniversary tour. We didn’t get either, by the way. It wasn’t a shock, or a surprise, or a let down, but I’m wondering why I feel a bit flat after that. And really I shouldn’t.

First off, I’ve now heard and seen Elizabeth Fraser hit those notes at the peak of Teardrop. Second, I fell a little bit in love with Horace Andy, reggae legend, and possibly the only person on stage tonight who looked like he enjoyed himself. Fraser isn’t meant to, not if you sing Teardrop or Black Milk like you mean it. I expected a visual spectacle, there’s always been that element to Massive Attack’s whole pitch.

I’ve duly noted that they have worked with Adam Curtis before. I can sit through 3 hours of his mesmerising Hypernormalisation documentary and feel a bit numb. His film Bitter Lake had a similar effect, but as the backdrop to a couple of hours of spliced together video, knowing cynicism and Jenny Holzer stylised bursts of words the unsubtle attempts at messaging just left me infantilised, as did my teenage son, who assured me he won’t be donning a tinfoil hat in his student flat tonight.

I don’t love Massive Attack for their attitude or their charm, it’s possible even to forgive a lack of an encore, zero attempt to connect with the audience or the rigid set list. Possible even to pass over the £100 we paid (did I mention that?), because at times they were spectacular. That sound comes from here. Those bold cover versions of Velvet Underground, Cure and Ultravox, and that magical atmospheric grit they have crafted to painful precision.

The call of the mountains

Our rocky place

I'd love to claim that my bond with the hills, dales and mountains of England is in my blood. That I could climb rock faces and that I learnt of daring tales of Himalayan expeditions on my mother's knee. And that Chris Bonnington, Don Whillans and Ian Clough were as familiar names around our lives as George Best, Jimmy Armfield and Bobby Charlton. I'd like to be able to say that I was raised on Kendal Mint Cake, born with a Karrimor rucksack on my back and a pair of stout walking boots to guide those few tentative steps.

All of that is true, by the way. Before she had me at the age of 22 my mum was a climber, hitching to Scotland, proper hardcore, hanging with Whillans and that crowd, dossing down in a tenement in the Gorbals before heading out to Glencoe in the morning. Her dearest friends were Ian and Nikki Clough, absolute legends of the climbing world. We now wear the brand of Patagonia on our packs and coats, that logo with the distinctive peaks of Cordillera Del Paine in bleakest southern Chile. Their expedition conquered the central tower of Paine in 1963. To get there they stowed away on container ships and hitched a ride on a military aircraft. Nikki climbed the Matterhorn, the first woman to do so. Ian died on Annapurna in Nepal in 1970. Like I said, legends.

The very first Freshwalks

I probably managed more outdoor yomps than most kids, but I never tried to climb anything more challenging than a tree.  Weekends were spent scrambling around Littledale and Baines Crag, which we called The Rocky Place (top). I went Youth Hostelling with my primary school, hiking with the Scouts and even went up Borrowdale with the serious walkers in my secondary school.

And yet serious walking and hiking never quite fully formed in me. Music, football and friends took hold. True, for my 21st birthday me and the mother got our boots on and conquered Dow Crag, which is laughable when you think of what she was capable of and could have done. I did a bit of exploring when I lived in Australia and climbed Uluru, which I probably shouldn't have done. But I then went for years without doing something that clearly made me very happy whenever I did it. It always gave me a sense of achievement and helped me refocus. I realise now what I was missing all that time.

Over the last ten years, as a family, we've strapped on our boots and hit the hills. We've bagged the best that the Lake District has to offer, even getting lost attempting Haystacks, Wainwright's favourite, only to discover we were in fact on the top of Grey Knotts. But the kids have had enough of that lark, except for the middle son who has taken it to extremes.

It's the Peaks that now draw me closer. And other undiscovered gems around the North West, like Delamere and the coastal walks. That step into nature, away from everything that my city and suburban life isn't. A retreat from the present and yet a step into my past. Yes, I think I've got back in touch with who I should have been. I like the community of Freshwalks, a responsible adult guiding our route and actually understanding maps. I love that it has done all of this for me. It has pushed us to be better, to go further and not only to explore the outdoors and appreciate the natural beauty of the North of England, but to smell it, touch it and respect the challenge it can give us.

The Rodwell incident - Unidentified Footballing Object

Tony Mowbray congratulates Man of the Match, Jack Rodwell

Close watchers of the Sunderland Netflix documentary would have struggled to spot Jack Rodwell in the first few episodes. Not only was the ex-England international not playing, he didn’t appear to be training, or appear in person at all. By the time Chris Coleman arrived, continuing to marshall a losing team, and looking for excuses; Rodwell was cast as pantomime villain.

The facts, we were led to believe, were that he was refusing to play and refusing to leave. He was everything that was wrong with football. Prepared to sacrifice his career for the short term riches that the lottery winning loot of a Premier League salary has offered up. There might be a truth in that, and if I was a Sunderland supporter, as many good friends are, I wouldn’t be happy that a player of his stature was unused while they dropped two divisions.

A far more visible presence on Netflix was the hapless Sunderland chief executive Martin Bain, for whom any sympathy was tempered by the fact that, like David Brent, he welcomed the cameras into his “behind the scenes” world. I’m going to cast an unpopular opinion in here; I’m as uncomfortable with the new exaltation of the senior management team at Rovers, and I winced at Tony Mowbray appearing without irony on a team picture of the “backroom team” tucked in behind Steve Waggott, the Bain of my club.

To be fair, I respect these guys have a vital job to do. And I’ll be honest, when Rodwell signed for Blackburn Rovers I wasn’t doing cartwheels at the prospect, given the collective failure of previous regimes. We’ve been had over by these types of footballer before. One of them now plies his trade on the Match of the Day sofa, ruling his moralistic eye over the footballing world, set up for life with the unearned income from a club in crisis. Obviously I don’t mean Alan Shearer.

In the last month we’ve seen the difference between Danny Murphy and Jack Rodwell. Rodwell has been towering in his appearances for us, and especially so against a dreadful Ipswich side yesterday. I’d suggest the motivation and management of a player of his obvious natural ability has been instrumental to his transformation. I have no idea how much he is paid, or what bonus structure he is on. I believe he’s on a year long contract. We get a glimpse of Mowbray’s management style when he speaks to the press and how he behaves on the sidelines. But what we see in Rodwell’s performances in central defence is of a manager who has found a purpose for a player who has physically changed since he made his mark for Everton as a creative midfielder.

Not only that, Rodwell looks hungry and determined. I love a centre half who is comfortable on the ball. Charlie Mulgrew has that, Rodwell too, and it’s a part of Darragh Lenihan’s game that is improving as he plays alongside either of these two.

For the first time this season yesterday, I sat through a match never in any doubt that Rovers would win comfortably. Paul Lambert’s Ipswich were a ragbag of journeymen artisans and broken men. Much like Paul Lambert’s Blackburn Rovers, to be fair. Every single Rovers player won his personal battles around the pitch, the one possible exception being James Collins putting a shift in at the back and matching Danny Graham in his weekly game of grapple. It should have been 5 or 6, frankly.

I over-confidently predicted that we’d finish 8th at the beginning of the season. To do that would involve getting beat a few times and suffering bad runs as well as enjoying good ones. That’s happened and will continue to do so. What is more, when we win it will be because good players like Rodwell, like Bradley Dack, like Lewis Travis, put in great performances, inevitably attracting the attention of bigger clubs. It’s a good position to be in, maybe not dramatic enough for a Netflix series, but it’ll do me.

Millwall Away

When Tony Mowbray said that Blackburn Rovers’ 2-0 win at Millwall was a terrible game of football, he was obviously right. But it reinforced to me once again how these days are about so much more than the 90 minutes that we forked out decent money to see.

Even the heading for this – Millwall Away – conjures up an adventure, a sense of danger that any football fan will relate to. We were as far away from any of that as we ate artisan snacks in Borough Market before the game, sharing stories with friends old and new in the Market Porter.

Yes, I was delighted to see Rovers win, I always am. But it reminded me of many of the games last season where I felt we were a better footballing side, but had that slight doubt we might not be physically strong enough and could come away empty handed (Walsall, Northampton, Oldham). 

Sure, Rovers contributed to the dire game; lots of mistakes, hoofing up to Bradley Dack (who was off the pace) and Joe Nuttall (who needs match practice), no shots on target until the bitter end and some pointless passing around. But I always take something from a game and for me it was the solid defensive pair of Darragh Lenihan and Jack Rodwell, and once again the role of Lewis Travis in picking out some terrific forward passes and properly mixing it when required.

What will live with me longer in the memory though was the experience of visiting The Den. I went to their old ground a couple of times, even meeting Jack Walker outside on the second occasion and getting a quote from him for the Lancashire Evening Post. I didn’t meet anyone like that this time but Matt Smith (Doctor Who) was stood just behind us. Such is the mythology around Millwall that I did vaguely consider asking him for a lift out of there if he had his blue phone box with him. I’m not going to lie, it is intimidating, it is grim. Everything about getting to the stadium; the heavy police presence, the cages guiding the walkway to the stadium, the fact visiting fans are placed only in the upper tier all create the feeling of being in a state of siege. That in turn encourages a certain type of swaggering dickhead among visitors and ours were no different. We also saw a gang of Dutch lads at London Bridge earlier in the afternoon, and I spoke to another group of PSV Eindhoven fans on the train from South Bermondsey. I doubt there’d be the same attraction for this kind of football tourist to go to Brentford or Charlton.

That makes it another new ground I’ve watched football on, the 158th. I’m on 84 clubs out of the current 92 clubs (the Punk 92), and I’m up to 80 of the current 92 grounds.