Daily archives: November 2, 2012


Daily Blog 11/02/2012

  • If you are an adult journalist, as I’m assuming the vast majority of Daily Mail journalists are, and you write about the womanly curves of a 14 year old, then there’s something wrong with you. No ifs, no buts, no nothing. If you pull a picture of a pubescent teenager from the internet and write about how she’s ageing nicely, or growing up fast, or that she has enviable curves then you’re directly contributing to a culture of sexualisation and child abuse. End of. I don’t give a fuck what your editor told you to write. You are not fit for the title journalist and serious consideration should be given to your right to work among children at all.

    tags: DailyMail

  • London Road Fire Station is a former fire station in Manchester, England. It was opened in 1906,[1] on a site bounded by London Road, Whitworth Street, Minshull Street South and Fairfield Street. Designed in the Edwardian Baroque style by Woodhouse, Willoughby and Langham in red brick and terracotta, it cost £142,000 to build. It was given a Grade II* listed building rating by English Heritage in 1974.

    In addition to a fire station, the building housed a police station, an ambulance station, a bank, a Coroner’s Court, and a gas-meter testing station. The fire station operated for 80 years, housing the firemen, their families, and the horse drawn appliances that were replaced by motorised vehicles a few years after its opening. It was visited by royalty in 1942, in recognition of the brigade’s wartime efforts. After the war it became a training centre and in 1952 became the first centre equipped to record emergency calls. However the fire station became expensive to maintain and after council reorganisation decline set in.

    The building was the headquarters of the Manchester Fire Brigade until the brigade was replaced by the Greater Manchester Fire Service in 1974. The fire station closed in 1986, since when it has been largely unused despite several redevelopment proposals. It was placed on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk Register in 2001 and in 2010 Manchester City Council served a compulsory purchase order on the fire station’s owner, Britannia Hotels.

    tags: manchester

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Petition Manchester’s London Road Fire Station: Standing Up To The Apathy, Neglect & Abuse by Britannia Hotels for 26 years. Enough is Enough.

Petition Manchester’s London Road Fire Station: Standing Up To The Apathy, Neglect & Abuse by Britannia Hotels for 26 years. Enough is Enough.

The London Road Fire Station is one of Manchester’s great lost buildings, possibly the greatest.  I say lost, but it’s still standing, more or less.  The owners, Britannia Group, have done less than the bare minimum needed to keep it intact and it now looks like it’s in danger of falling down.  Sign the petition to have the previously overturned Compulsory Purchase Order overturned and, hopefully, something done to rescue the building.

(The petition site asks for a donation, you can ignore it and still have your signature included.  I accidentally did this twice.)