Archive for September, 2006

5athegallery are holding an interesting exhibition of high quality images in various media by 10 artists who take inspiration directly from sporting activities and the multifarious people who partake in sports. Good Sport is a selling visual art exhibition showcasing works in different media - framed pastel and pencil drawings, acrylic and enamel paintings, colour photography, digital prints and mixed media artworks.

This distinctive exhibition highlights and reveals a unique range of high quality work created by 10 national artists who are at varying stages of their careers. The exhibiting artists are Eleana Louka, Mandy Wilkinson, Paul Floyd Blake, Anne Barron, Paul Francis, Peter Owen, David Baird, Ken Hughes, Bernard Platt and Trademark.

Admission Free, suitable for all ages. 11 August - 21 October 2006
Open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 10am-2pm
01744 20466

5athegallery
5a Bickerstaffe Street
St Helens
Merseyside
WA10 1DH

Warrington’s annual beer festival, Oktoberfest, will be held at Parr Hall and will run from October 12 to 14 this year. Organised by the Rotary Club and sponsored by Coors, the event is now in its 10th year. The £5 entry fee includes a pint and souvenir glass.

Manchester City Council has given planning application for a wind turbine at Manchester City’s stadium. The turbine has been designed by renowned architect, Sir Norman Foster, and be built and managed by Ecotricity. With a total height of 120m it will dwarf the nearby B of the Bang sculpture. The project will make the City of Manchester Stadium the first in the world to be powered solely by renewable energy. The turbine is expected to be operational in 2007.

Regional weekly newspaper The North West Enquirer has gone into administration after printing just 21 issues. Sales dropped below target of 15,000 and a last-minute funding package to rescue the newspaper failed.

Police have recovered the bodies of three young men who drowned in Ullswater. The men were aged 15, 17 and 21 and were part of a group swimming in the lake on Saturday.

Several months ago this website approached Southport’s Pleasureland and requested some photographs for a free listing on this site.

Two weeks later we received a couple of photographs that could be politely described as amateurish. That was it. There were no invites to come and visit the attraction, no words of thanks for the free listing, nothing but a couple of crappy photos.

Earlier this month Pleasureland closed permanently, blaming competition from publicly-funded attractions and competition from Sunday shopping and sporting events.

Perhaps the owners need a basic lesson in marketing. Had they invited us to look around we would have made videos of the attraction and included them in our site, allowed them to use our site for press releases, etc. etc. We’re not pretending for one minute that this could have saved Pleasureland, but if they’d applied the same marketing techniques across the board they might just have seen some positive results.

Time and time again we see tourism businesses go bust. They all share a couple of common characteristics. The first is a distinct lack of interest in marketing themselves, even when it’s free. The second is blaming external factors when things go wrong.

Look at yourselves. It might just help.

Windermere’s Low Wood Hotel has opened a new £750,000 marina. It offers 40 water berths and 70 hard-standing storage spaces.

Eyck Zimmer, Executive Chef at the Lowry Hotel’s River Restaurant has been crowned Knorr National Chef of the Year 2006.

Around 25,000 protestors will gather in Manchester on Saturday for an anti-war demonstration. The Stop The War protest will coincide with the start of the Labour Party’s annual conference being held in the city

Bolton Wanderers manager ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce has denied allegations by the BBC’s Panorama programme of receiving illegal payments to facilitate player transfers. In the programme an undercover reporter filmed agents accusing the manager of accepting such payments