Notices by iona 🐝 (iona@social.coop), page 36

"Here at Imagine FM we pride ourselves on playing a wide variety of music both old and new, offering an oasis of calm for you to enjoy great music without disrupting your busy lifestyle."

I'm trying to think of a situation where a radio station might disrupt my busy lifestyle.

Perhaps if I had to take time out of my busy lifestyle to retune the radio because the station is shit.

On the radio, another hour of "High School Hits". Come on, radio, come up with some other silly tropes for me to take the piss out of.

Also, why is this station called Imagine FM? Is it as in "imagine if we had any listeners"?

@nev Couldn't agree more. I've been to some places that are over-touristed lately and there's just nothing whatsoever to commend them as places to visit or live.

Mention no names, but tourists from a certain country are notorious for arriving in a city and spending as little money as possible. I was talking to a cabbie in Belfast who said these particular people hardly even buy a coffee when they get off their cruise ships because everything's provided. How is that of any benefit to locals?

I ordered some radio equipment from India and it came wrapped up in some pages from something called the Lucknow Times. Celebrity gossip, ads for back-to-school supplies and local cinemas.

I always find it fascinating to get just a glimpse of something so ordinary and everyday from another country, rather than the big, tragic news that usually reaches here from so far away. :)

@thamesynne I really like Bradford, and Sheffield (I lived/worked there for a few years). Everyone says Bradford has a bad name, but it has a lot more 'soul' than Leeds, which is basically a giant call centre and shopping mall with a motorway around it.

@thamesynne Normally I am just outside Bradford :)

@thamesynne My next door neighbour on one side is a lunatic, so I stay out of his way, but I pass the time of day with the nice people on the other side. :)

Most of the time, I am happy with my own company. People (especially family) think it's weird and get "concerned" that I spend so much time alone, but it's taken a long time to figure out what makes me happy.

@thamesynne What region are you in? I'm stuck in the North West for a bit, and it's hotter here than anywhere apart from London

Also, he's the MP for Howden. I worked in Howden for a while and it's a creepy 1950s throwback of a place.

No, radio newsreader, David Davis resigning from anything is never a "severe blow" to that thing.

@thamesynne Yorkshire is 19 degrees, but the place where I'm stuck at present is about 26 degrees. I just want to go home. :/

@thamesynne I agree - if someone's coming over, you tend to know about it beforehand. Random doorbell rings are always:
- I'm doing some tarmacking / hedge cutting / roofing in the area and I've got some gear left over
- please will you consider changing your religion to ours
- vote for me (but this is the only time you'll see or hear from me for four years)

All of which can fuck off.

@hollyamory Like most councils, they probably care mostly for the type of districts where you can get a £6 cup of tea (I'm looking at you, "Northern Quarter").

Other than a small new shopping centre and a bit of landscaping in the city centre, Bradford is pretty much completely neglected and under-resourced.

What it often means is that space opens up for stuff people actually want, rather than stuff the council thinks "Investors" will want. Bradford has an anarchist social centre and things.

@hollyamory I'm near Bradford, so these days I just drive past Manchester to visit my parents' house, so I tune 96.9 as soon as I get to the top of the Pennines and it goes to static once I get to about Wilmslow.

I can take or leave the city centre (mostly leave!) but I love those diverse neighbourhoods around South Manchester, always find them pleasant places to visit. :)

@hollyamory They have moved to new facilities recently but they used to be in a rambling old house in Levenshulme. I have been there quite a few times myself in my previous career in radio :)

There is also BCB Radio in Bradford (106.6 FM, http://www.bcbradio.co.uk/)

It's positive, diverse, socially conscious, radical radio. Unlike a lot of community radio stations, they aren't scared to ask hard questions and debate difficult local issues on air.

There are a lot of repeats but the fact that they manage to keep together a quality independent station with so much speech content in a place the size of Bradford is remarkable.

One that I forgot to mention is ALL FM in Manchester (96.9 FM, http://allfm.org/)

It's what I tend to have on in the car when I'm in earshot of Manchester. Can be a bit hit-and-miss presentation-wise and you can sometimes hit a slot where it is in Chinese or they're playing a backup minidisc from 2003, but the programming is eclectic, varied, often radical and community-minded.

@hollyamory Thank you! Listener Supported radio is fascinating - it's not really something we have here. We have either BBC stations, largely awful commercial radio or community radio stations funded by and constantly scratching around for grants.

I have always wondered why the listener-supported model hasn't ever taken off here, for stations offering something a bit different to the usual that listeners might feel inclined to donate to.

@hollyamory I would love to understand more about linguistic discrimination :)

@cathal @bjoern I would love a browser extension that marks links to sites that either don't work in the EU or make you go through a bunch of screens agreeing to waive various rights. Perhaps an icon next to them, or the link in red.

Tired of wasting time clicking a link only to find it's to some US site that wants your first born in exchange for reading their crappy news post.