Dear readers — a warm welcome to your Monday briefing from our sun-drenched office. Over the weekend, Ophira took on the heavenly task of traipsing up and down East Lancashire’s green hills to visit the region’s famous Chinese chippies, resulting in a beautiful piece about our rich history of chip punting and receiving lots of glowing comments from readers in return. In case you missed it, read the piece by clicking below.
Last week, news broke that Sacha Lord resigned as Andy Burnham’s adviser after the Arts Council asked his company to return the £400,000 of public money it received during the height of the pandemic. Jack, who originally broke the story about the misleading Arts Council application, wrote a piece answering your key questions about what happens next. Tomorrow, we’ll be publishing a special podcast episode where Mollie and Jack discuss how this story came together and the anxiety we felt when a legal threat dropped into our inbox, which you’ll be able to listen to on your preferred platform by clicking here.
Coming up this week, we’ll finally be able to publish our blockbuster investigation into a Greater Manchester higher education institute where one key figure's xenophobic attitude is potentially damaging its attempts to appeal to international students. Plus, as we’re long overdue a writer’s edition, we’ve asked Jack to publish his musings about the city, his humble request for some lovely cafés and cocktail bars with outdoor seating on St Ann’s Square and why he thinks the demise of one greasy fast food chain tells us something about the direction of Manchester’s restaurant scene. In order to read these highly varied and richly detailed stories, take out a paid subscription by clicking the button below.
Finally, there’s two weeks left to apply to become a staff writer at The Bell, our new high quality, long form newspaper in Glasgow. We want to hear from amazing journalists in the region who have at least three years’ experience in journalism and enjoy distilling complex topics and chasing down hard-to-reach sources. Find out more here.
Have your say in shaping Manchester’s Building Society
In 2025 Manchester Building Society will be offering a different way to manage your money. We believe in branches, where people can access savings, mortgages and in-person financial advice. We’ll be opening on King Street later this year, before setting up in high streets and towns across Greater Manchester.
Now we need your help. Building societies exist to serve their members and communities — so we want to hear from Mill readers about what you would want from your building society. Sign up here to share your views. Or if you’d prefer to just be kept in the loop, register your email details here.
This post was sponsored by Manchester Building Society
🌤️ This week’s weather
Tuesday 🌧️ Cloudy and windy with outbreaks of rain. 9°C.
Wednesday ⛅️ Mostly dry with hazy sunny spells. 8°C.
Thursday 🌤️ Early mist, then dry with long spells of sunshine. 8°C.
Friday 🌤️ Dry with spells of winter sunshine. 7°C.
Weekend ☁️ Colder and cloudier, remaining mostly dry.
We get our weekly forecast from Manchester Weather.
Your briefing
🍔 Edge Street’s favourite greasy burger restaurant, Almost Famous, announced its sudden departure last Monday, prompting a week of glowing obituaries and teary-eyed goodbyes. However, it doesn’t seem as though the positive press is going to last. In the last week, the hospitality branch of the workers’ union Unite have alleged that the restaurant owes a total of £207,000 in unpaid wages, annual leaves, notice pay and unpaid tips to its workforce and graffiti has appeared outside the now-shuttered Almost Famous building saying UNPAID LABOUR = THEFT. The bosses of Almost Famous told the MEN that redundancy pay will be handled through the Redundancy Protection Service, but didn’t offer any details on when staff could expect to receive their wages. Know more about this story? Get in touch with Jack.
🎶 Café Blah, the quirky café and music venue in Withington known for its avant-garde film screenings, book quizzes, gigs and cosy bookshop, is struggling to find a new home. Adam Porrino and Tess Parkinson, Café Blah’s owners, were kicked out of their Withington home in October when landlord H Homes dramatically changed the locks, the culmination of a year-long battle over proposed rent increases. It turned out Porrino and Parkinson were not only locked out, but the Withington premises were now being advertised for rent on the property website Zoopla. The pair are now looking for new premises for the café, after several unsuccessful viewings in south Manchester. If you know of anywhere that has low business rates, a reasonable landlord and neighbours who are unlikely to complain about music and other low-level ambient noise, get in touch with the team here. You can also donate to their crowdfunder to help them put down a deposit on a new space.
🏫 Why is it so difficult to find a place at a special needs educational school in Greater Manchester? Joe Robinson, communications manager at the social housing group Riverside, says his three-and-a-half-year-old autistic son has been turned away from five Oldham schools for varying reasons, including schools being “at capacity” or lacking the necessary expertise. Robinson says an independent panel concluded that a mainstream school would be suitable for their son, but the family worries that a mainstream schooling environment may not be able to meet his needs. The story highlights what we’ve previously examined elsewhere in Greater Manchester as an issue of significantly low school provision for children with special educational needs, resulting in children with special educational needs being forced to attend mainstream schools or be educated out of the borough, at a massive cost to the the taxpayer. In 2022/23, Rochdale Council spent just over £1 million on transporting children with special educational needs to schools out of the borough. By the 2023/24 academic year, this had risen to £1.3 million. We’d like to do more reporting in this area — if you’re a parent or guardian of a child with special educational needs, please reach out to tell us about your experiences with accessing schools.
This news item was amended on 04/02 to more accurately reflect that Robinson's issues with finding adequate school provision for his son were with Oldham Council, not Rochdale Council.
🚌 TfGM has announced new monthly and annual tickets which will be valid across Bee Network buses and trams and available to buy from 23 March. Andy Burnham says it’s an example of how the transport body is making “huge strides towards making public transport cheaper”. So how much can you save? For example, if you’re like us and each week, you pay for an adult seven day anytime tram travelcard for zones one, two and three, you’ll currently be paying £25.40 for the privilege. If you want this seven day travelcard to include Bee Network buses, as well as zones one, two and three on the tram, that’ll be £36.40, an extra £11 a month for unlimited bus and tram travel. If you’re someone who doesn’t travel around the city region as regularly as our reporters do, you may benefit from the new London-style daily caps, which mean you can travel as much and as far as you like in Greater Manchester in one day by “tapping in” and “tapping out” using your contactless card on Bee Network buses and trams, while never paying more than a maximum of £9.50 a day. All of this is being funded by a rise in the mayoral precept, a form of council tax, by £11 annually for council tax band D properties.
Quick hits
📚 A lovely obituary to Rick Seccombe, the radical bookseller and environmental activist who worked in Manchester and lived in New Mills and was praised for his ability to be “the rock around which others could safely navigate the highs and lows”.
⛪ St Thomas Centre in Ardwick, the beautiful Grade-II listed Georgian church that used to house the voluntary organisation GMCVO, will remain a hub of community and voluntary support after the organisation Macc secured a lease from Manchester City Council.
🛋️ You can now stay overnight in Islington Mill’s elegant attic space, replete with white net curtains, ambient red lighting, plush sofas and a beautiful wooden piano, by booking on AirBnB.
📰 Jim Mullen, CEO of Reach, the London-based publisher of the Manchester Evening News and the Liverpool Echo, tells The Sunday Times he’s fed up of the “long list of affluent media commentators who criticise us”, adding they “should know better”.
⛺ By our count, there are now 42 tents outside the porticoes of the Town Hall extension on St Peter’s Square.
🌐 Finally, we recommend following People of Greater Manchester on X for the passing thoughts, cultural recommendations and photos by local Mancunians. With a different person taking over the account each week, it allows you to see the city through many different eyes and feel closer to where you live.
Home of the week
We don’t usually go for the all-white look but this three-bed terrace in Swinton is styling it out. Bonus points for the palm tree in the front drive. £350,000.
Our favourite reads
Cole Palmer: Made in the Caribbean — BBC Sport
This piece traces the lineage of star Chelsea striker Cole Palmer from St Kitts and Nevis — and island nation in the Caribbean — to Moss Side. Palmer’s great-grandparents came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation, and his granddad, Sterry, later joined them and traded cricket for football, growing up not far from Manchester City’s old ground. Palmer would sign for City at under-eights, taking tips from his granddad. Now one of England’s best players, he keeps the flag of St Kitts and Nevis stitched into his boots, in honour of his granddad.
My research was misused to convict Lucy Letby — so I did my own inquiry — The Times
In 1989, Dr Shoo Lee — professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, an honorary physician at the city’s Mount Sinai Hospital and president of the Canadian Neonatal Foundation — published a paper about air embolisms (blockages) in infants. In 2023, the paper was used as evidence to convict Lucy Letby at Manchester Crown Court, of murdering or attempting to murder fourteen babies. Since then, Lee has carried out his own investigation of the evidence, and believes his research was misused. “The evidence that was used to convict her, in my opinion,” he says, “wasn’t quite right.”
Meet England’s most popular golfer … a Youtuber from Bolton — The Times
Rick Shiels, a former golf coach from Bolton, started a YouTube channel in 2012. He was struggling to find students, so started posting swing analysis videos and general coaching tips. Some 30 videos later, he was the most popular coach at his driving range. Now, the videos he and other golfing influencers post have become more popular than the Masters tournament itself. Rory McIlroy has admitted the PGA tour had been “diminished” by Shiels and his peers. And he isn’t planning on stopping. Right now, he has 3 million subscribers, but “there are 70-odd million golfers worldwide. Three million is the top now, but why can’t a channel get to 10 million subscribers?”
Our to do list
Tuesday
🐸 Manchester Netwalk are hosting a guided lunchtime wander, covering the history of Manchester’s relationship with animals. Learn how the dogs and the frogs played a part in the city’s sport, medicine, fashion, and food history. £16.
🍳 And from 7-9pm you can attend a secret dish cooking class, hosted by Bounceback Food CIC — a social enterprise fighting food poverty. Tickets cost £55, and you’ll learn to make two new recipes (though you’ll only find out what they are that evening).
Wednesday
🎻 The 26-piece Hallé ensemble are hosting a relaxed morning concert, performing popular classical music. The 50-minute performance will be followed by a chance to meet members of the orchestra and ask questions. £5 tickets once again.
🌹 Brian Groom – author of Made in Manchester – will be returning to Bolton Family History Society with a series of pen portraits of personalities from Lancashire, Manchester, and Bolton. He will be giving a talk based on his book, covering local figures from John Dalton to Ian McKellen. Tickets cost £5, though entry is free to members of the society.
Thursday
⛪ Our neighbours at Cross Street Chapel are hosting a talk by Dr Peter Lindfield, on the extraordinary Victorian architect George Shaw, who “blurred the lines between historical preservation and audacious forgery”. We might have to pop to this one after work. £7.21.
☕ And Leo & Roobs Café will be home to an evening interactive coffee tasting — for those of you who don’t mind getting wired on caffeine on a Thursday night. £10.

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