Facial Recognition comes to Manchester

Dear readers — memories of Dominic Noonan, suspended in the air 50 metres above Piccadilly Gardens, will have come flooding back this week with the return of a massive Mancunian Ferris Wheel. The wheel signals both the return of the Manchester Christmas markets and the annual avalanche of complaints about the Manchester Christmas markets, a debate Mill readers made their opinions on very clear last year: 65% of you said you’d do away with them altogether. Suffice to say, your cries of protest have not been heard.

Before we get on with that, and the rest of your briefing, here’s a quick recap of our stories from last week:

• On Wednesday the news we’d broken the week before was confirmed, that Manchester Pride had collapsed, potentially leaving dozens of artists and contractors out of pocket. We’re still interested in following up new leads on this story, so please continue to send tips to Jack. 
• On Thursday Gary Ryan made his Mill debut, reporting on a bizarre online trend, led by the likes of Charlie Veitch, seeking to expose gay men having sex in public places (such as the so-called ‘Cottager’s Cove’ on the Rochdale Canal) around the city centre. 
• And Jack Dulhanty wrote our weekend read about the newly-released plans for the re-design of Piccadilly Gardens. A strong consensus seems to have emerged in the comments section to simply “concrete over the lot”, but do continue to get involved with your views.

Scanning for shoplifters in Sale

Last Tuesday, Facial Recognition Technology arrived on the streets of Greater Manchester for the very first time. Greater Manchester Police are now in possession of two Live Facial Recognition (LFR) vans which they received from the Home Office, and first deployed them on both Tuesday and Thursday in Sale town centre — where apparently there has been a recent surge in shoplifting.

What does this mean? The introduction of LFR Technology to Manchester, in a nutshell, means that the GMP are scanning people’s faces in order to identify them. The force have created a watchlist identifying persons of interest — either wanted criminals, or missing people. 

Those caught on camera by the LFR vans will have their faces compared against this database, focusing on key features such as width of nose, distance between eyes, and shape of cheekbones. If you are present in an area targeted by LFR vans, chances are your face will be scanned. However, the GMP have said that images of faces not included on their watchlist cannot be identified, and will be deleted within 24 hours. The CCTV footage, however, is kept for 31 days, in line with the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.

Where are they off to next? The LFR vans are heading to Bolton Town Centre this week, and will be present there on Wednesday and Thursday. The following week, they make their Manchester City Centre debut. You can see the full list of dates and locations here and read the GMP statement on the new technology here. 

What has the response been? While police say this technology will further enable them to prevent crime on Britain’s streets, some campaign groups see it as a huge overreach and affront to civil liberties. Big Brother Watch, which launched in 2009, is one such group. It described the move from GMP as “Orwellian” and pointed out that no arrests were even made during the first deployment of Face ID in Sale.

Pat Karney’s taste of Christmas

“Our Christmas Markets are by a million miles the best Christmas markets anywhere in the world,” said Pat Karney, Manchester’s King of Festive Cheer, this week. Last year, Mill readers voted conclusively to scrap markets (by two thirds to a third) but Mill readers aren’t in charge of such matters, as it happens, Pat Karney is, and this year the councillor is promising the biggest and most spectacular markets yet. Those of you wandering around the city centre in the past few days will have seen the biggest addition, a 50-metre high ferris wheel on Albert Square, the one immortalized by gangster Dominic Noonan 11 years ago. The return of Albert Square is the main change for this year, hosting something called ‘A Taste of Christmas’ which is a festive mini-market with food and drink stalls (as well as the wheel, of course). In total there will be 274 stalls across 10 sites, running from 7 November to 22 December. We apologise greatly to the 65% of you who are, presumably, mortified. 

The Piccadilly Problem

After we published Jack Dulhanty’s piece over the weekend about the future of Piccadilly Gardens, we heard one thing loud and clear: the people of Manchester want a new name for our garden-less grey space. “Just pave the damn thing and rename it Piccadilly Square” wrote one Reddit user in response to our article, while Mill reader Jeremy Hinds suggested the more alliterative “Piccadilly Plaza”. However, more than one reader called for a change not just to the misleading ‘Garden’ aspect of the name, but the ‘Piccadilly’ part too. “[W]hy is it named after a place in London anyway?” read a comment on Reddit, while another commenter suggested the name “Turing Square” combined with a statue, presumably of Turing himself, presumably a little better quality than the one in Sackville Gardens.

“The planners need to abandon the name Piccadilly, which unfortunately refers to the famous road in London where piccadill collars were made and sold, many centuries ago!” wrote Mill reader Howard. “They need to ask the Public to suggest a completely new name, for the future of Manchester’s main Square.” So here we have it Millers, vote for your favourite, or suggest an alternative option in the comments.

Five years after a tragedy, Awaab’s Law arrives

Today, Awaab’s Law comes into play, requiring landlords to fix damp and mould in strict timeframes. In 2020, two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who lived on Rochdale’s Freehold, died from a respiratory condition caused by exposure to mould. His father had repeatedly raised the issue with Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH). "They don't do anything for you - it's really devastating," he says. Speaking to the BBC, barrister Christian Weaver said the case was “eye-opening” and that he couldn’t believe how frequently the family’s appeals for help had been ignored: "They'd made complaints for years, an NHS health visitor had written to Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, and even someone from the landlord's own team had visited the property - but nothing was done,” he said. In total, more than a million houses in the UK had damp problems in 2023-24. The new law means landlords have to respond to complaints about damp issues with a site visit and inspection within ten days, and make the problem safe within five days after that. If the deadlines can’t be met social landlords will be obliged to find alternative accommodation. Failing that, tenants can take legal action. There are, however, limits here. For the time being the law applies to only the social rented sector. While the government intends to extend it to the private rented sector, it’s not yet clear when this will be.

Open newsroom

This is a longshot, we know, but do any of you happen to know any Manchester street artists? We’re looking for anyone from mural painters to small-time taggers — get in touch with Ophira here.

This week’s weather

Tuesday: 🌦️Windy with a mixture of sunny spells and showers. Max 12°c. 

Wednesday: 🌦️ Breezy with bright spells and occasional light showers. Max 11°c

Thursday: 🌦️ Sunny spells with an increasing risk of showers. Turning windy. Max 12°c.

Friday: 🌦️ Breezy with sunny spells and isolated showers. Max 12°c.

Weekend: 🌦️ Mild, changeable and often breezy.

Home of the week

Tasteful interior design and a bedroom just about big enough to fit the bed at this mezzanine apartment near the Northern Quarter. It’s listed for £205,000. 

What we’re reading

Marina Abramovic’s new X-rated art show is an orgy of soft porn cliches — The Telegraph

“Did someone spike my drink last night?”, begins this one-star review of the recent Marina Abramovic show at Aviva Studios. “Or did I really watch five naked men relentlessly hump a patch of artificial turf for four hours while, nearby, a bunch of nude women caressed their breasts and periodically snogged some skeletons?” Suffice to say, The Telegraph’s Alastair Snook left Manchester feeling unimpressed (and borderline scandalised). If you want to hear from someone who did enjoy it though, read Sophie Atkinson’s excellent piece in The Mill.

‘It keeps coming back’: Rochdale estate still plagued by mould that killed toddler — The Guardian 

This week Awaab’s Law comes into play, forcing landlords to fix damp and mould problems within a strict timeframe — a response to the death of two year old Awaab Ishak on the Freehold Estate in Rochdale in 2020. A year after the death, The Guardian visited the estate and spoke to people living there, some of whom had traces of mould in every room of their flats. “Every time they bring new stuff, new anti-mould paints, but it keeps coming back. Every week we clean and clean and clean but it doesn’t help. You still breathe the mould in,” said one resident, Arunas Yankunas.

Our writers recommend

🤡 Ophira is off tonight to an event recently described to her as a “very, very big deal”. 81 year old soprano Lucy Shelton has been shipped over from New York for exactly two UK performances of Pierrot Lunaire, one in London, and one at the International Anthony Burgess Centre, tonight. The piece, we’re told, has a mythic reputation, as does Shelton herself. We leave you with this message from the event's organiser: “Quite frankly, you will never see something like this again.”

🍷Meanwhile, Jack Dulhanty is looking forward to Wines of Circumstance in Wilmslow. It’s been described as a journey from “Stellenbosch via Stockport” with the opportunity to try wines from “unexpected places”. Jack describes himself as a keen "oenophile", with a particular penchant for "red". Tickets here.

🎆 And finally, Jack Walton will be heading to the Carlton Club later in the week for their bonfire and fireworks display. Activities start at 3pm and it’s £12 for adults.

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