Disappointing news from the sunshine state that a top-of-the-range 50m swimming pool will not be finished in time for the 2012 Olympic Games.

But fear not, it was never the plan of the council to have the pool ready in time.

From BBC

North Down Borough Council chief executive, Trevor Polley, said it was never just about the Olympics.
“The main thrust of this has always been that there will be a legacy for the people of NI.
“It will the first 50m pool here and it will be useful beyond the Olympics and will available for the commonwealth games.”

Yet only as recently as September last year the council was bigging up its potential.

From The Belfast Telegraph

“With a two-year build programme, the pool will be available for use as a training base by international teams competing at London 2012. It will, of course, also provide a much needed world class sporting facility for local swimmers competing in all aquatic sports.” said Mayor of North Down, Councillor Tony Hill

Well that settles that then…

(ht to @nicofell)

Here’s the impressive debut single from Belfast band Before Machines.

Another great Start Together production and we’ll hopefully see more from the boys in the coming months.

Before Machines – Hearts

And So I Watch You From Afar or more like… And So I Watch You Explode From My Car.

Ok, that was rough.

Anyway, ASIWYFA were nearly blown to smithereens during their 3-date stint supporting rock super-group Them Crooked Vultures.

Mental.

There are three absolute truths in the world of music. You can’t dance to shoe-gaze, second albums almost always define a band and your favourite group will someday split up. And so it was with heavy hearts fans of Belfast band Cutaways arrived at the Empire Music hall for what was to be their last show – ever.

A week before the Gifted gig, the electro-pop trio announced they were shutting up shop. A mixture of band discord, frustration with their direction and the fact that one of the members was heading off to an exotic corner of the world were all apparently factors.

But before Paul McIver, Grace McMacken and Ryan Simpson took to the stage for the last time, there was strong support from Derry outfit Future Chaser, Ablespacer and the new look and sound of The Jane Bradfords.

First up is the young lads of Future Chaser. Youthful in age, but certainly establishing themselves as one of the must-see bands in Northern Ireland this year. A mixture of plumbing grungy depths and Greenday, Ataris inspired highs are met with impressive vocal caterwauling from frontman Niall Doherty. The highlight of the fast paced set has to be the bands current single ‘Chances’. Definitely one to keep watching.

The most noteworthy element of Ablespacer’s performance was the intricate and intelligent drumming of Richard van den Bos. Apart from this, the band seemed to be going through the motions. Some of the songs, including ‘Draw A Line’ hinted at the creative potential that had earned the band so much interest over previous months, but instead the growing Empire crowd was treated to quite a lacklustre performance.

The Jane Bradfords next, a band showing absolutely no signs of breaking up, in fighting or stagnation. The set was great, and for this reviewer a first chance to see the new and improved line-up. Gone are the Grandaddy infused synths and in their place, more guitars. Front man Declan Gallen has a great knack for getting the most out of every note and his vocals soared over some of their classic tracks, giving them a new polished twist.

But the night was for Cutaways. Break ups are never easy. Often fractious, tense, sometimes violent. Words are exchanged, harsh spiteful words. A box of CDs, a wardrobe of clothes on the step, plates broken. This is how it happens. But not for this relationship. This was their ‘last fandango’ as Rigsy described it and they planned to go out in style.

And the night wasn’t just about music. As always, the band put so much more into their performance and they expect it back in spades from their audience. Hand-made decorations, sweets on all the tables and ‘design your own’ cds underlined one of the core-values of this group – having fun. As Grace urged ATL listeners: “This isn’t a wake – it’s a party.”

So to the music. It wasn’t the best Cutaways show in terms of performance. Maybe emotion and nerves took hold, but the whole gig seems to lack the energy this band are normally renowned for. But nonetheless the quality of the music still shone through.

Earth and Earthly Things is a powerful debut album in the vein of Architecture in Helsinki and it was great to hear the synth driven sounds of ‘Milo of Kroton’, ‘I Spilled Your Drink’, ‘So You Broke My Heart’ and the infectious single ‘Lovers Are Lunatics’. By this point the floor of the Empire had woken up. The audience was getting it’s dance on, but the party was nearly over.

Finishing the night with a new single off their scrapped second album (see my first paragraph…) the band gave us a glimpse, a taster of what could have been. It’s ironic that ‘We Were Closer In Winter Time’, a song about drifting apart, is probably one of their strongest and mature to date.
And how fitting it happens to be about changing times.

So farewell Cutaways, so long Ablespacer (who have now announced their retirement from the scene) and any other bands thinking about chucking it in – can you at least wait a few weeks…?

BBC Radio 4 has come under criticism after broadcasting the Afternoon Play: Six Impossible Things - just a day after the violent tragedy which unfolded on the Cumbrian coast.

The play, which started with gunfire, told the story of a murderous bank-robber pursued by the police.  Standard middle-of-the-road fare from R4 and any other day it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

But, in the play the killer threatened one victim that he would ‘blow their face off’, something the Whitehaven killer Derrick Bird actually did to at least 5 of his 12 victims.

ITV were quicker to act, postponing an episode which involved an armed seige. Though replacing it with Harry Hill’s TV Burp will for some, still be quite disturbing.

So do broadcasters have a duty to sanitise their outputs after such an event and should Radio 4 have dropped the play in favour of something gunless and ‘less disturbing’ to their audience?

Belfast band Cutaways will be playing their last gig EVER tonight.

RIP Cutaways we hardly knew ye (except for all them gigs you played every week.)

Edit: What a spiffy poster.

So what is Hyperlocal? Damned if I know – and I just did a presentation on the thing at Barcamp Belfast.

For a definition of Hyperlocal blogging go here, then check out this fantastic resource and finally have a wee read of these two very different examples of how it works.

The very articulate Alan In Belfast helped me host the chat and showed everyone an interview with Nicky Getgood (of Digbeth is Good), about the practicalities and reasons for blogging on a very local-local scale.

Nicky talked briefly about how hyperlocal blogging can really bring communities together… even for the opening of local ATMs:

So the talk was really an introduction to Hyperlocal and also a chance to see if there’s an appetite for such a site in Belfast – which I now think there is.

There is a wealth of content about Belfast being published on the web at the moment. Just look at sites like Lookaly,  Secret Belfast and Slugger O’Toole and you start to appreciate how healthy this city’s online community is.

So why don’t we bring this all together. But how – I’m not entirely sure.

One of the things we did was to pass out a handful of Community Telegraphs. I asked everyone to rip out anything they found interesting or useful to get a sense of what people look for in local news.

Out of the 38 articles featured in the North Belfast Community Telegraph (May 19th) there were only 14 which attendees found of interest or value. Less than half of the entire paper.

The top five articles were:

Police Reports – 5 people picked police reports including this one on falling crime figures in Newtownabbey.

Whiteabbey A&E closure – There were 4 clippings for the closure of Whiteabbey Hospital’s A&E department.

‘Students show that they Care about their art work‘ – A story about UU art students showing their wares at a local nursing home piqued the interest of 4 attendees.

Court Reports – ‘Man fined for cutting trees’, a story about a Malone architect who hacked down four defenceless trees in a conservation area, garnered a surprising amount of interest (3 people) from the Barcamp audience.

CT on the grapevine – 3 people chose this reader contributions section which  included news about upcoming events, festivals or days of interest in North Belfast (split in to different areas – Antrim Road, N Belfast, Waterworks and N’abbey.)

I’ll talk about hyperlocal more in my next post and about how it might work in Belfast.

Rum and raisin, vanilla, butterscotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road
And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop.
I named for you all the wild flowers of the Burren
I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife,
Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica,
Herb robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch,
Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort,
Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bindweed, bog pimpernel.

Michael Longley.