PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[gordondaviesmoustache]

That team was much better than the United one which survived last season. That late goal from Antic killed us as a club for many years.

That group of players should never have been relegated.

 

[StillBluessinceHydeRoad]

FFS - let's have a ruling already.

The so-called current FFP rulings in the P/L are all about locking in top sides - invest only to the limit of your proven income.

Whereas FFP was marketed as a solution to prevent clubs from going bankrupt having borrowed too much to advance their ambitions.

Scrap the extant FFP rules in the P/L - they're only meant to maintain the likes of ManU at the top of the league (haha, turns out that spending a shit-ton of money doesn't make you successful) - and - instead - institute a solvency rule... which is to say, no club is allowed to borrow beyond their foreseeable means to pay back said loan.

If you want to cap investment by an independently wealthy owner as well - controversially that's a good idea, but the P/L needs to be careful if they go this way, as other teams (Barca in the past, Real Madrid always) frequently spend massively - then set that cap.

Man City are in no danger of going bankrupt - we're not even the top spenders over the last 4 years - and yet we're hit with this bullshit investigation - perhaps, in the strict sense of rules on the book we may have committed some infractions - but for christ sake - whatever infractions we may have committed were aimed at getting around the bullshit FFP rules and never, ever endangered the club's solvency.

I still believe that the PL's FFP and PSR are worth a challenge in the way that City have challenged the APT rules. Competition law states unequivocally that any attempt to prohibit or limit investment is not allowed and that any sanctions imposed in pursuit are void. Yet FFP began by a de facto enunciation of the principle that unlimited owner investment was unfair and should be limited to comparatively insignificant levels. Now, the only way I can see that this is permissible is if the courts have granted a "sporting exception" to what would seem to be clearly stated law. I am unaware of any such "sporting exception". PSR maintains this state of affairs. Now, the only way I think the IC can accept this sporting exception is if it accepts another, and that is a measure to ensure clubs do not become unsustainable because of the levels of debt they fall into. We know of at least one club which hides behind the regulations and carries on spending recklessly when its debt is higher than its annual revenue. The PL is full of owners who can guarantee the sustainability of their clubs, but also enough owners who can run up shed loads of debt. Which course of action do we encourage? Which course of action should we encourage?

 

[halfcenturyup]

I still believe that the PL's FFP and PSR are worth a challenge in the way that City have challenged the APT rules. Competition law states unequivocally that any attempt to prohibit or limit investment is not allowed and that any sanctions imposed in pursuit are void. Yet FFP began by a de facto enunciation of the principle that unlimited owner investment was unfair and should be limited to comparatively insignificant levels. Now, the only way I can see that this is permissible is if the courts have granted a "sporting exception" to what would seem to be clearly stated law. I am unaware of any such "sporting exception". PSR maintains this state of affairs. Now, the only way I think the IC can accept this sporting exception is if it accepts another, and that is a measure to ensure clubs do not become unsustainable because of the levels of debt they fall into. We know of at least one club which hides behind the regulations and carries on spending recklessly when its debt is higher than its annual revenue. The PL is full of owners who can guarantee the sustainability of their clubs, but also enough owners who can run up shed loads of debt. Which course of action do we encourage? Which course of action should we encourage?

Don't forget the shareholder loans which are treated differently to other RPTs. If it was unlawful for APT, it should be for FFP/PSR, no?

 

[Semper aggressus]

Will we ever find out the verdict of this bullshit?

I can’t believe we’d have just signed all these new players if the board believed we’d be relegated. I’m certain that this 115 witch hunt has failed, otherwise the media and PL would be desperate to report/leak something.

 

[TheGhost]

Dementia is a strange illness my mother said one day those glasses are not mine, actually they were. I don't were glasses never wore them again

I’ve worked with people who have dementia. It was explained to me that people who have dementia have all their memories like books on a book case and someone randomly takes those books off one at a time.

 

[Paladin]

I’ve worked with people who have dementia. It was explained to me that people who have dementia have all their memories like books on a book case and someone randomly takes those books off one at a time.

I heard the same analogy, with the addition that the newest memories are the ones that are taken first, and the old memories are the last to go. This was true in the case of my father-in-law.

 

[Damocles]

I’ve worked with people who have dementia. It was explained to me that people who have dementia have all their memories like books on a book case and someone randomly takes those books off one at a time.

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically, Mum loved to spin a yarn, but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing Roman Catholic demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

 

[deano ou812]

Will we ever find out the verdict of this bullshit?

I can’t believe we’d have just signed all these new players if the board believed we’d be relegated. I’m certain that this 115 witch hunt has failed, otherwise the media and PL would be desperate to report/leak something.

They will anyhow when it does come out as in,if we have been cleared completely they’ll still twist it to make us look guilty,the media have invested to much early reporting on this not to fit it too their needs..

 

[deano ou812]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

Wow,what a mother and woman she was fantastic post ..

 

[Fordyboy46]

Football 365 say that other prem clubs are growing very frustrated and getting angry over the delay of the 115 announcement. Going to throw the new season into turmoil as well. Yes it's the red scouse or rag **** who's come out with yet more bs because infact it's him who's getting frustrated with the delay. Weird cunts on that site

 

[Damocles]

Wow,what a mother and woman she was fantastic post ..

She was a dickhead at times too, as all people are. She wasn't perfect and she made mistakes and went in wrong directions at times even purposely so.
None of us are angels or demons. But you can learn from everyone and take the bits that make sense.

 

[TheGhost]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

No one will write a better post on this forum. It brought a tear to my eyes.

 

[BlueRockape]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

Beautiful

 

[Chris in London]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

What a great post.

Heart wrenching story, but still a great post.

 

[Grassland Blue]

Regarding our charges, I read something today which seemed appropriate as follows;

Why is it that a lie requires no proof whilst the truth requires endless proof?

 

[Benarbia's Fat Dad]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically, Mum loved to spin a yarn, but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing Roman Catholic demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

Thank you for sharing this. This world is so much better for people like your mum.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically, Mum loved to spin a yarn, but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing Roman Catholic demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

Outfuckingstanding post…for a ****!

Seriously…in a post of the year contest, that’s got to be the front runner in the “Manc-Life” category.

 

[Boney]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically, Mum loved to spin a yarn, but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing Roman Catholic demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

thank you
my mum was diagnosed with dementia November 2023, it is gradual decline and i am now my mums carer. i find it quite hard to talk about. you are at the end of your journey i am at the start. reading your post means so much to me.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

On the subject of the 115, could there be a seemingly long delay because of certain legal issues it has thrown up?

Be they against City, which might be fraud, or the restraint of trade brought on by FFP/PSR issues, it appears to me that in peeling this onion, there might have been significant legal issues uncovered and unaddressed by the initial claims of “breaking the rules,” and the Panel will have to deal with their ruling accordingly.

They might be walking a fine line in their decision, while also opening a can of worms for those involved.

It’s said, “Never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.” In this case, has a question been asked, by the PL or City, that has thrown up an answer…or further set of questions…that have muddied the waters of any decision?

Just the “whatsboutism?” of ownership “loans” must have put a cat amongst the pigeons, let alone the significantly more subtle, and difficult to parse, legal questions thrown into the mix.

All that said, we really should not have to wait until the season starts to find out our fate.

 

[1961_vintage]

My Mum always worked in professions that helped people. She started as a cardiac nurse training in Blackburn hospital in the 70s. Then when me and my sister were born she took a break to raise us until we were about 10 or so, then decided one day that she was bored being a housewife and went and got a Health and Social Studies degree from Man Met Uni when she was around 40. Which sounds normal now but back in the 90s was a bit odd. She was the eldest in her degree class by about 20 years. She had to learn statistics modules and things like that which were tough for her, as she explained, because when she was a kid in the early 60s then girls didn't really do much maths outside of "household maths". I'm sure that's false technically, Mum loved to spin a yarn, but I know there was a gender divide there for a lot of years and perhaps her school was conservative.

She came from a massive family, 13 of them altogether and all the boys were in the military and several of the girls married soldiers. The matriarch was my Nan, a four foot nothing Roman Catholic demon of a women who used to hide behind the entrance of the front door whenever a young man was coming to see one of her girls and hit them with an umbrella. She was a social worker on the Racecourse estate in Sale so she knew every scoundrel, every criminal, and every kid and eventually their kids too. She rode her pushbike round that estate until she died aged 93 and everyone let on to her. Any time I ever made friends there, my Nan knew their Dad who had been in the nick or their Mum who was a single Mum who she used to take a bit of stew round for or whatever. My Mum learned growing up that everybody was broke, both financially and the other kind, that looking after your neighbours and community is the highest achievement you can have. This is a value that I still hold. I contribute my tech skills to the City fan community but I also coach young offenders and I'm involved in the local foodbank and various other things. I'm not saying don't give to Oxfam or whatever, but I was always taught that you have to give to your own neighbourhood or town first.

During her degree, her specific area of study for her dissertation was about the discrimination faced by gay people in the NHS due to the AIDS epidemic. Back then, some nurses refused to treat gay people who even had a sprained wrist because they didn't want to get AIDS. There's still massive inequalities in this area but MUCH less so than Manchester in the 1990s. Due to this, some of my strongest memories of her are her inviting various characters round to our house and her interviewing them with her little Dictaphone at the dining room table. Wide range of characters. Cross dressers, trans people, gay people, lesbian couples, 60 year old straight laced accountants who had secret BDSM laden gay flings on the side. It was mindblowing as a kid who had never seen this side of Manchester. And I've got to be honest, as a kid I was a bigot. My old man was a working class engineer who drank in clubland and he had never seen such things so declared them "freaks" which I copied. My Mum rebelled against this by telling me to stay up and sit at the table during these interviews, she wanted me and my sister to hear these human beings, listen and understand their struggles and find common ground. On her interview Dictaphone tapes, which I found years later, there's my squeaky kid voice asking a trans person why they like dresses or a lesbian which one is the man. I remember when Boy George's autobiography came out called "Take I Like A Man" and my Mum gave it to me to read. I don't think I was even a teenager yet and it detailed sex, drugs and rock and roll in a fairly hardcore and unedited way. But also the inner thoughts and feelings and struggles of George O'Dowd. She always stressed that everybody is a human being, that everybody deserves compassion and understanding and humour. Don't presume to know anyone and their struggles. Learn about them and try to see where they are coming from. And then you can better take the piss out of them. Her most valued currency was always a good natured but somewhat personal craic. She despised people who took themselves too seriously, ironically like my Dad used to be before they split, and used to laugh at the absurd parts of life even if they were sensitive because absurdity is funny. I remember before she was ill, I started losing my hair in my 20s or so and I was properly self conscious about it. My missus clued my Mum into this and that she shouldn't mention it. So she constantly cracked jokes about it until the day she died. I once had a cut across my eye from an errant stud in a footy game that scraped down my face and as soon as I walked in her house, she said "fuck me, it's Dr Evil". When I saw her getting more ill in terms of the dementia; you can sort of see it developing over time, I used to tell her she needed to get tested and she used to say "settle down Kojak". She always knew the thing you were most sensitive about and she always knew how to make it something that you laugh at, which made you feel better about it.

She actually ran a mental health institute for a charity for years after she graduated. It was this halfway house in the gorgeous little village of Summerseat just outside Bury. It was a house for schizophrenics but also people diagnosed with schizophrenia who had committed some crime and were sentenced but it wasn't serious enough for full jail or they'd been to full jail and needed a step program. I was older now, probably GCSE years. Listen, if you ever want a properly interesting conversation about the world then go and have a cig with a guy with schizophrenia. Fucking hell. As a teenager this was an eye opening experience for me and taught me that you can have all the data in the world but still you can't make the correct conclusions. We used to do a lot of BBQs and things at that house, a lot of the staff brought their family and intermingled with the residents. Again, got to be honest but I saw some of these guys and I told Mum that they were off their fucking heads. She asked me why that makes me better than them. That's how she was.

I remember the first time I noticed her dementia. It was actually something simple. Mum used to live on tea, she liked that more than heroin addicts love a cheeky bit of heroin. She had type 1 diabetes her whole life which caused the nerves in her extremities to stop working including her optic nerve so she went blind. Once she was declared legally blind, she said it was because she had to look at the light bouncing off my bald head so much and gifted me the wig (a shoulder length blonde affair with bangs) she used after the chemo from double mastectomy so as to not cause further damage to the rest of my family. So when she made a brew she had this thing you put in a cup and beeps when it's at the right amount of water then beeps again when it has brewed for a minute or whatever, So she made herself a brew and went and sat down to listen to her stories on the radio (the Blind society send USB drives with audiobooks on them for free), She heard the second beep signalling and she asked what it was. That's when I knew we had to get her to the GP.

Over the years, and it was years, I watched this fearless, rebellious, shining light of a woman become a husk. Like a zombie you see in a film, it's something that looks human but has no "soul" to it. And it was gradual, she didn't go from 0 to 100%, dementia is the worst way to die because it steals pieces of you bit by bit by bit until the only thing left are the basic human functions. She remember Keegan, she remembered her Topic, she remembered I was bald even if she didn't know why that was important. But within that, there's something more profound. It means that we're not our biology. It means that who we are are made up from our experiences, our memories, our actions and inactions. That our default state is the zombie but the brilliance of humanity is based on how we interact with each other and the world and that's what makes every person a unique person who is interesting and is worth listening to. She taught me how to be a better man my entire life and but this was her last lesson and the most important one.

The world is cruel. And absurd. And great. And infuriating. And everything inbetween of all of those states. But if you stop laughing at it then you've lost. Find the thing you're most sensitive about, the thing that hurts you the most, and just take the piss with it because it makes it feel better.

Sorry for the blog post, I've not really had chance to talk much about her since she died. Bit of catharsis going on here. I appreciate it's probably inappropriate to some.

Inspirational.