This year, Britain's retail giants have stepped up the commercialisation of the night when spooks and ghouls are celebrated. Sainsbury's is selling four times as much Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night merchandise than last year and Woolworth's has 224 Hallowe'en products on its shelves, a third of them aimed at adults.Not surprisingly, children are targeted with a range of costumes, trick or treat sweets and luminous battery-operated ghosts.For retailers, Hallowe'en represents a welcome staging post on the long march to Christmas.Attempts to take more money during one of the smaller events exemplifies the rise of seasonal retailing that has brought the commercial start of Christmas earlier each year.The shops say there are many reasons for the growing celebration of 31 October, which is an entertaining party for some but also he biggest event on the calendar for pagans.Woolworth's said that although Hallowe'en had traditionally been a mock-scary night for children, grown-ups were the ones making it more popular. The town launched a campaign in March aimed at rejuvenating its centre. Three leading landscape design companies have been invited to pitch for a contract to transform the pedestrian-only High Street, and to stage exhibitions of their schemes for residents to examine and comment on. After hosting events for the Commonwealth Games in 2002, its also stages international triathlon competitions and has its own luxury hotel, The Copthorne.Worsley, the "birthplace of the transport revolution" also gets its own guide. The building of the Bridgewater Canal linking coal mines in the village with Manchester halved the price of coal overnight and fuelled the Industrial Revolution.Council leader John Merry said: "Salford is a modern and forward-looking city but its past has an important role to play in its future."... Contrary to its industrial image, the city comprises 60 per cent green space, the campaign claims, while trumpeting the renewal of the docks area.Central to the city's story of post-industrial regeneration is Salford Quays, which is now a mixture of modern apartments and the remnants of the old docks.
and the plan for SloughAs Salford relies on communism and football to enhance its image, Slough, whose image has been battered by The Office and the author Sir John Betjeman's poetic call for "friendly bombs" to fall on it, is also attempting to present a new face to the world. "The council simply wants to change some of the preconceptions about Salford as the 'Dirty Old Town' ... We are not miserable people; we are happy and we are proud of our links with history."Heritage trails have become popular in the region, a trend towards self-promotion from the most unlikely sources that was highlighted last month when the London borough of Southwark published a tourist map called "Discover the Real Peckham".Salford's rebranding has been backed up by a campaign, entitled "One Shocking City", intended to change public perception. The current site of a tax office was formerly occupied by DC Thomson, printers of The Dandy and Beano comics.Walking tours were introduced in the mid-Nineties and new guides were published last week to cover three areas: Salford Quays, Worsley and Chapel Street, the gateway to Manchester."We are not trying to divorce ourselves from our industrial past - far from it," said Karen Robinson, marketing and tourism officer at Salford City Council. Visitors taking the walking tour of Chapel Street will also note that it was the first in the country to be lit by gas and was scene of one of the first battles of the Civil War.
The German-born philosopher and communist thinker, Engels, ran a mill in the town for his father in the second half of the 19th century while researching his classic work, The Condition of the Working Class in England.On the same street, between 1910 and 1927, the carbonated fruit drink Vimto was produced. Detectives from the Anti-Terrorist Branch arrested the man in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire, on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000.. Salford has been a challenge to image-makers since it inspired Ewan MacColl's song, "Dirty Old Town", made famous by The Pogues. But the birthplace of the painter LS Lowry is undergoing a transformation in a promotional push in which its industrial past is only part of the picture. A series of maps and guides accompanying three new heritage walks aim to cater for the tastes of most visitors, and include a trio of beverage-related attractions.Salford, the guides reveal, was home to Copperheads, the favourite drinking haunt of George Best, the Manchester United legend, when he was at the height of his powers in the 1970s.In the Crescent pub, on Chapel Street, the bar talk was of more elevated kind between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. "We are desperate to talk to that person."We have treated this very seriously from the outset."I do not know whether this event has taken place, there is a lot of rumour, myth and speculation."There is nothing to support that particular allegation at the moment.". A 27-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the London bomb attacks on 7 July that killed 52 people on Tubes and a bus.
