THAT’S swanky – a newspaper with its own stadium. We can’t run to that in York, where the only large concert space has fallen into disuse and potential decrepitude, thanks to council inertia.

Envy of a newspaper with an arena to its name can be tempered by the nature of the visit. The Manchester Evening News Arena is not the finest venue around, certainly not with regard to the yellow-jacketed enforcers who throw away your bottles of water and suggest you return the rucksack to the car (difficult when it is parked in York).

Or another canary-hued jobsworth who leapt forward to end a spot of illegal sandwich munching and to wonder out loud what sort of a foolish colleague had let your columnist inside armed with an old rucksack and a box of bread-based snacks.

So, nothing to eat until the slow midnight train home from Piccadilly Station; nothing to drink until a glass of York tap water at 2am.

All this is not to forget the cavernous concrete ambience, the neck-twisting sight view, the sudden pre-performance darkness and consequent stair-stumbling, or the annoying audience members forever climbing in and out of their seats.

Still, it was worth it to see The Hold Steady and Counting Crows and a good family time was had by all, with the middle boy meeting his older brother, who popped over from university for the gig.

They stood down below and we sat among the fidgety, the mobile phone obsessives (why do people text in the middle of a show?) and the restless row-hoppers and excuse-me merchants.

This is not the place to review the show, other than to observe that The Hold Steady deserve more than a hurried support slot, however briefly fantastic they were; and to concur with the Counting Crows enthusiasts in our midst that this band put on a very good show.

No, this is more the time to observe, admittedly not for the first time, what a shame it is that people in York have to travel so far to see sizeable concerts: to Manchester, Sheffield or Newcastle. Once we had the York Barbican, which wasn’t perfect but did put on fairly big bands. Now we have to go far away and endure the attentions of yellow-topped tyrants.

Surely a bit of vision could see the Barbican revived or a similar venue built somewhere in the vicinity? Or will it all disappear in another of those stultifying York arguments in which much is said and nothing much done?


* WELL, we’ve had our fun and righteous displeasure about MPs.

Easy to understand the anger over what are described as expenses although they are in general allowances; and there is a difference: allowances are there to be claimed, even if the system has descended into what appears to be a gilded rush in which too many MPs line their own pockets.

What mischief we had on learning that John Prescott had claimed for two toilet seats; and what an unhappy mental picture that conjures of the stresses endured by the Prescott lavatory seats.

At the time of writing, Tory shadow ministers and MPs are falling over themselves to pay back excessive allowances (ordered to do so by their extremely wealthy leader), while Labour ministers and MPs ride the tide of voter hostility.

Now I’m not going to defend a system that lets MPs live in what seems to be a grand style at the public’s expense. But it is worth pointing out that the anti-politics antipathy stirred up by the Daily Telegraph’s revelations could mostly benefit fringe parties.

It is the single-issue loons of UKIP or the dissembling far-right haters of the BNP who stand to gain in the present mood.

No one benefits when BNP leader Nick Griffin can get away, on the eve of next month’s European elections, with saying: “In a way, I am happy to be distanced from other politicians when you see what is happening with MPs’ expenses... we are not in it for the money.”

Perhaps not, but one shudders to wonder what they are in it for.