Yesterday, I took the opportunity to breathe in the culture of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse, by taking a stroll down Manchester’s Oxford Road
A few hours earlier, driving in to the city centre, I had listened to George being quizzed on his party political broadcast, sorry, I meant his budget speech, the previous day [Wednesday March 17th, 2015].
There has been quite enough coverage of that elsewhere.
My interest had then been further aroused by a caller to BBC’s Radio Five Live who said he was self-employed, and that he believed the government when they said they were creating a Northern Powerhouse. You can feel it in the air everywhere in Manchester, he added.
Really? I thought it was a good time to check on the theory of a spring-time culture which you can ‘feel in the air’ as proposed by Sumantra Ghoshal (1948-2004)
Oxford Road
My route took me through the University campus to Oxford Road just west of the University Hospital. I was heading for the newwly re-opened Whitworth Art Gallery. [Image by Alan Williams]
Lunch-time pedestrians were enjoying one of the city’s four seasons which can all arrive on the same day. Yesterday it was Spring. It was also the time of an artistic festival that had gone in for an eye-catching title SICK. This announced itself with the rather phallic structure shown above.
It also happened to be student rag week. Oxford Road was lined with stalls were erected for money-raising and for all the other motives of the student societies and activists. My image was a glimpse of the Students’ HQ
That Powerhouse Culture
If power translates into culture I could detect signs of a new vibrancy. I had to tread carefully to avoid the installation artworks, [and that was before I reached the Art Gallery]. Once there, the super-modernist surround of the sensational revamp seemed to merge nicely with the Victorian buildings off Oxford Road. My photograph was taken, facing left from the Whitworth’s entrance steps.
So, is the re-birth of The Whitworth part of powerhouse culture emerging in the North West of England, with thriving Manchester at its heart? Maybe. If so, it was summed up in a snatch of conversation overheard as two students hurried past. The accent of one was was more Brixton than Bolton:
” I’s a’ a me’aphor, inni?’ I heard her say.
Today, the eclipse
Yesterday Oxford Road, today the eclipse. Which, I suppose is also important culturally as another metaphor.
Roger Bannister and Guto Nyth Brân
April 27, 2014The distinguished historian Mary Beard celebrated the breaking of the four minute mile barrier by Roger Bannister, sixty years ago
The race took place on the 6th May 1954. Writing how times have changed, Beard gently points to the social message in the mythologised race:
Counter claims from North Korea …
A charming piece with a gentle social message. But I await the claims from North Korea for the achievements of their great champion and leader which have not been reported in the Western media.
…and from South Wales
Mention should also be made of the folk hero Guto Nyth Brân from my own little village in South Wales, where Guto’s feats have become famous in poetry and song. Every New Year’s eve, a race is run in his honour.
Guto was a man of the people who was said could run seven miles, from his farm in the hills to Pontypridd and back, before his mother’s kettle had boiled.
Difficult to translate into modern time-keeping and tea-making technologies and race distances of course.