Manchester not exhibiting at MIPIM next year and the MEN’s obsession with the Xmas Coca Cola truck

Difficult to ignore last week’s news that Manchester will not be exhibiting at MIPIM next year – as disclosed by online property jazz mag Place North West the very day Bev Craig took over as council leader.

The city council and its partners have been a conspicuous presence at the Cannes property bang for more than two decades – so the change in tack will hardly have gone unnoticed by hard-hatted weasels on the regeneration scene. “Nonsense” scoffed Allied London CEO Mike Ingall. “This is the year Manchester needs to firmly set out its message…There has been a significant change in civic leadership and the new leadership needs to set out its intention on a public international stage, sending a clear message to facilitate, enable, and procure global inward investment.”

Whether it means that Craig is set to pedestrianise the city centre, plant a million daisies and embark on a program of yurt building remains to be seen – the official line apparently being a holding position. “The ongoing Covid-19 situation and the financial implications of investing in MIPIM are both significant variables at this time,” say Marketing Manchester, who will send a reduced delegation and no stand. Craig-watchers wondering how far to the left Craig may tack, development-wise, and whether the new leader has the appetite for the property schmooze will have to wait and see if the Mancunian daisy age is really upon us.

Real magic

Coca Cola would seem to have had their money’s worth out of the Manchester Evening News of late, as their famed truck farted its way into the Trafford Centre car park as part of its 2021 world tour this week. We counted no less than six recent news items not identified as promotional tie-ins – plus a promotional tie-in, of course. In case you haven’t been following: “Coca-Cola confirmed the 2021 Truck Tour is going ahead this festive season” (Nov 16) “Coca Cola Christmas truck confirms first stops in festive road trip” (Nov 22)  “Holidays are coming as iconic Coca Cola truck visits Manchester” (Nov 28); “Coca-Cola Christmas truck IS coming to Manchester as part of festive tour” (Nov 30) “Coca-Cola Christmas truck arrives in Manchester” (Dec 1);  “Here’s how you could spend a night inside the luxury Coca-Cola truck” (Dec 5); “Stranger’s ‘most beautiful’ gesture for boy waiting in line at Trafford Centre’s Coca-Cola truck” (Dec 6).

With the soft drink allegedly linked to dental decay, childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes readers will take their own view as to whether the manufacturer is seeking to poison imaginations as well as metabolisms by replacing one magical reindeer-drawn conveyance of the popular mind with their own spray-painted shit-mobile. The heart-melting story about the young boy given a hat by a stranger at this week’s truck-worshipping ceremony certainly clears the bar for our local media mind control file. So who knows? Maybe watching your local newspaper bend over for Coca Cola will become a festive institution?

Dead Rubber Fetish

Not the first time we’ve seen Pep field a strong team for a meaningless fixture – the theory goes, supposedly, that first teamers needed the minutes more than academy players needed the exposure – but with the Kyle Walker red card and Phil Foden picking up a knock Tuesday’s Leipzig debacle will be keenly forgotten.

Back home, as the Premiership shapes up to be a three-way shootout between City, Liverpool and Chelsea the form team appears to be Liverpool, even if they do lie second. It’s been said that this year’s vintage could turn out to be one of the most egalitarian sides of Guardiola’s career, with no single shining star for the manager to build the side around. For all the cut glass combination play, though, it’s the number 9 question around which doubts coalesce. Is a striker needed? Or will Grealish step up to the plate? Or can city make do without settling the question definitively?

Louise Woodcock RIP

A fine piece in the Quietus about DIY artist, musician and comic Louise Woodcock who died suddenly last week. To those who knew her a great eccentric and creative life force. To those who didn’t – or those coming into Manchester’s music and art worlds from the outside – an outlier in a thriving landscape sometimes overlooked by the mainstream. The DIY and avant-garde scenes based around Islington Mill, the White Hotel and the Strangeways district have been an engine of the city’s cultural life for some time now. In what is quite a unique twilight world Woodcock was, as Fergal Kinney’s obituary reflects, every bit the much-loved star. RIP.

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