Tomsk79

Anyone care to guess why this long neglected retail unit is being painted a dazzling shade of orange? Knowing Chorlton it is quite possibly a pop-up shop selling only vintage Tango.

As a committed reader of upmarket glossy South Manchester Life, I look down on those who take lowbrow inky tabloid South Manchester News. Or at least I would, if they didn't both come free through my letterbox. Here's the latest News front page: To be fair it's quite a nice pastiche of real inky tabloids, right down to calling the global financial crisis "Labour's crash" (nothing makes me more likely to vote Labour than hearing Lib Dems use such dishonest rhetoric). The News does get a little monotonous when every article quotes either Lib Dem campaigner Norman Lewis or Lib Dem campaigner Matt Gallagher, but then I don't suppose there are too many Lib Dem campaigners left in South Manchester to quote. The big disappointment is the traditional Lib Dem bar chart on the back page, which is actually a more or less accurate representation of the state of the parties. Yes, I did get a ruler out to check. I was hoping for something like these classics of t

I am jealous of Mrs Tomsk, who has received a personal letter addressed to her personally from Our Man in Westminster. A bit of a hotch potch there, laudable though it all sounds. The real clincher comes with the enclosed "petition" (in reality a please help stuff envelopes kind of thing). Private VIP pop concerts?!?! I am OUTRAGED. Imagine supporting Ed-and-Gordon's Labour Candidate! Just imagine! Apart from anything else we'd be letting down those somehow strangely familiar people of south Manchester.

At last, a piece of propaganda that doesn't pretend to be anything other than propaganda. Respect to Labour Voice: I'm rating this 9/10 for page glossiness and 4/10 for peculiar photo opportunities. I like how a bill frozen in ice illustrates "Labour's plans to cut energy bills" - a hint that their 2013 energy bill pledge has not so much been overtaken by events as lapped by them. Still, waste not want not. That ice cube can't have come cheap. Inside it's maybe 6/10 for truthfulness. A fair enough attack on the government's handling of the NHS and another on the bedroom tax, of course omitting that Our Man in Westminster rebelled on both issues.

When sorting through the latest batch of pizza menus and special offers for conservatories shoved through our letterbox each day, there's no greater joy than to find a copy of "South Manchester Life" nestled in the pile like a delicious glossy truffle. Regular readers of South Manchester Life will know that it tends to concentrate on the activities of our local Liberal Democrat MP, and last week's was no exception. There he is, cover star (twice), pictured above with the South Manchester Life team and guest editor Morrissey. Any resemblance between the South Manchester Life team and local Liberal Democrat activists is, of course, entirely coincidental. I'll spare you the details of what John Leech MP is doing for us in Parliament, but suffice to say South Manchester Life is very positive about them.