Owler Nook

A ward results map for the 1969 local elections in Manchester. Most wards voted Conservative.

Bless the Wikipedians for making 57-year-old local election data available.

Back when we voted Tory, apparently.

'Collegiate Church here we come' would have been a very different album.

A 1927 ward map of Manchester. The south of the city is dominated by large (presumably low-population?) wards. Burnage and Old Moat are entirely within Withington, and Fallowfield is part of Rusholme.

Greater Withington.

Nothing ever does in the world of transport.

A 1927 ward map of Manchester. Very few ward names have survived into the present day.

1927 wards. Back when there were TWO Moss Sides.

Maybe all wards should be named after famous residents.

Burnage –> John Thaw
Heatons North –> Lemmy
Marple South –> Timmy Mallett

TIL there used to be a ward in north Manchester called Hugh Oldham.

Would have required a lot of on-street parking to be removed. Instead we have a bit of a mess (but one of the busiest cycleways in the country).

Note the byline – it's Local Democracy Reporters, and the article previously appeared in the Manchester Evening News.

Chorlton traders say cycle path digging is damaging business Business owners say the road is being dug up for the third time in less than two years.

This has bugger all to do with the cycle lanes and everything to do with utility companies having the power to dig at will.

But hey, the cycling angle will get more clicks.

95% of mentions of class are just sneers, and we'd do well to omit them.

I have form. bsky.app/profile/owle...

Oh absolutely! That stop should have been named Hough End. I suspect the name was a political strategy to make it seem more useful.

A map of the area around Burton Road, Manchester, which is clearly marked WEST DIDSBURY.

I must have misremembered about West Didsbury - it's been labelled as such for a long time. This is the 1946 Ordnance Survey map for the area. I blame Withington Hospital for the confusion.

(The Definitely Maybe house is on Stratford Avenue.)

Essential context for understanding 'e-bikes' and calls for licensing.

YouTube video by Graham Coxon - Topic We're Out There Somewhere

Do you know 'We're out there Somewhere' by Coxon? Lovely 'This is a Low' style outro. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiNd...

The one on the left chose Stone Roses.

Personally I'd stick it at Fog Lane, though Broadway being in Withington will always be Wrong.

Oof. Feels about right, but is it too obvious?

Only if you go undercover in Manchester for 12 months for the local colour.

Yeah, though in the early 90s it would have been a very different place. Some might have even called it Withington.

i’ve seen bar charts you people wouldn’t believe. goodwins on fire near the shoulder of whoever the tory candidate is. i watched plumbers fix u-bends in the dark near a guy playing wonderwall. all those moments will be lost in time like andy burnham’s leadership runs. time to die

There is no part of the constituency below the national average for deprivation, which I feel has been perhaps overlooked when talking about gentrification in Levenshulme.

With the bonus irony that the Gallaghers grew up in an inter-war house that looks very different to this (I lived in a similar house at the other end of Burnage). Which now signifies 'working class' but would have been a step up when first built, with being semi-detached and having a garden.

I'd love a muriel.

Fancy buggers.

Potayto potatoh.

Beat me to it! bsky.app/profile/owle...

I think the key thing to grasp is that although the British are obsessed with class hierarchy, the signifiers and criteria are in fact pretty arbitrary, not in the sense that such things are always arbitrary, but that there’s no real agreement on them and a lot of it’s vibes.

A living room in a Victorian house, which happens to contain two Green Party members.

A living room in a Victoria house, which happens to contain four musicians.

So apparently one of these is 'salt of the earth, tells it like it is, speaks to the masses' and the other is not.