Dear readers — our weekend read about the opening of a vape shop in the Northern Quarter split Mill readers down the middle.
The opening of MCR1, with its apparently garish signage, had prompted huge and far-reaching complaints, from the relatively anodyne (was the sign technically in breach of planning law?) to the somewhat hysterical (was the sign a symbol of a nation in terminal decline?).
The piece got 60-odd responses on Instagram, some bemoaning the “weapons grade pearl clutching” of the complainers and the implication that “Stephenson (sic) Square is some world heritage site,” while others told The Mill that the signage was “an assault on the eyes. A bit like your branding”.
Well, as of today, we have an update: the anti-sign brigade has won. The MCR1 sign is gone.
Meanwhile prose-adulterer Jack Walton was spotted in the pages of our Liverpool title, The Post, at the weekend. The story was the culmination of four years of reporting about a north Liverpool community who awoke one morning to anonymous letters telling them that several plots of land they thought they’d owned communally had been flogged to companies registered in the Caribbean, often for as little as £1. It involves a priest receiving death threats, a celebrity debt collector and an arson attack on the nativity at a church.
Finally, some amazing news! Our Leeds-based sister publication has reached its goal of 500 pledged members, meaning it will launch in early May. This will be our seventh title, and likely one that a good few Mill members will have a connection to. If you do, and want to add to — not replace, please — your Mill consumption, here’s the website.
In five years, The Mill has grown from one person sitting in a cafe to a team of eight in our office, plus five spin-off sister publications around the country. We're now preparing to launch a seventh, in Leeds.
We’ve proven that our model can produce the best quality journalism in a city by some distance. Now we want to establish The Mill as the main way people in Manchester get their news.
That means we want to keep growing. We now have comfortably over 4,000 paying members (around 4,300), thanks to last year's campaign. This year we have lofty ambitious: to reach 5,000 paying members.
Editions like this one, our Monday news round-up, will always be sent for free. As we grow we want our journalism to remain accessible. But it's our paying members who fund everything we do. They are the reason we can continue to hire talented journalists, pursue the sorts of investigations local news in the UK has long since abandoned and even expand our role in the city, such as through talks in schools about misinformation online. If you'd like to help us continue to make The Mill better, support us here.
Ripe breasts, racist goths and AI-rappers: Nick Buckley makes the national news
Mill office favourite Nick Buckley MBE – the Advance UK candidate in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election – was featured in Novara last week, leaving us with an odd feeling of pride.
During his election campaign, Buckley – who came out just five votes behind Sir Oink-A-Lot of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party – received the backing of ‘Amelia’: an AI-generated Goth girl with a “penchant for racism”. According to experts, this is the first campaign where a political party has been linked to AI endorsements. It was described in the piece as “a concerning sign of things to come”.
In a video shared by Buckley on X, Amelia asks viewers to “join” her in voting for Buckley on the 26th — so we can only assume that the AI Southerner has moved northwards, most likely to Levenshulme, perhaps to study at Uni of. Buckley — who came third in the Manchester mayoral contest three years ago — wrote that the endorsement was “High praise indeed”.
This isn’t the only AI-actor to have interfered on behalf of Advance UK (a far-right Reform splinter party set up by ex-Reform deputy leader Ben Habib) in the recent election. ‘Danny Bones’, a skinhead rapper and occasional singer-songwriter, also threw his flat cap into the ring. Bones, whose most popular song is titled This is England (with lyrics such as “The streets are saying that it’s Britain that we’re mourning… Benefits are rampant, the borders are opening”) became unusually AI-aggravated after seeing then-Green party candidate, now-MP Hannah Spencer publish a campaign video in which she speaks Urdu. “Un-fucking-believable,” Bones says of the campaign.
Green Party campaign video… in Urdu. In Britain.
— thenodeproject (@thenodeproject) February 23, 2026
You couldn’t make it up. pic.twitter.com/ZTP1BFnlxT
Both characters were created by The Node Project, “a creative project built around fictional characters, music, visual storytelling and world-building”, as they put it to Novara. It’s unclear who is behind the project.
Buckley is best-known for founding The Mancunian Way, a charity he was dismissed from in 2020 for writing a critical article about Black Lives Matter (he was later reinstated and the board of trustees resigned). He’s no stranger to controversy. Back in May Buckley tweeted that “many British young women are whores but don’t realise they are”, which didn’t go down well.
Better known perhaps is his 2021 blog post titled “The Continuous Sexual Abuse Of Men”, in which he claims that women are sexually abusing men “every minute of every day in the UK” by wearing revealing outfits, high heels and makeup. He describes the “hundreds of occasions” in which he has been made to feel uncomfortable by “[l]arge ripe breasts on display barely contained by the fabric of a dress. Splits on dresses that take the eye on a journey up a smooth leg, beyond the thigh and to the bare flesh of a hip. Leggings so tight that a shapely pudendum can be admired. The sneaky thong peeking above the waistline of a tight pair of jeans. And who can forget the fixation of rock hard nipples poking through a thin t-shirt when a sudden chill hits.”
“What on earth did you get an MBE for?” wrote one commenter on the blog. “Does it stand for massive bell end?”
‘Phoenix-like’ from the ashes: a new student tower hits the Hotspur Press
Last Thursday, councillors unanimously approved new proposals for a student tower at the site of the burnt-down Hotspur Press. Plans for a 578-room student tower had already been approved pre-fire, but the blaze put the development on pause. Now, architect Stephen Hodder (see: St Michael’s tower and the funky tunnel-bridge that links M&S with the Arndale) is back with a slightly larger 619-room tower. Replacing the original plan to keep the iconic façade with the Percy Brothers and Hotspur Press signage, the updated proposal vows to restore both, while demolishing the entirety of the original building. On the day of the fire, while it still blazed, Hodder told the Mill that his student accommodation will rise “phoenix-like” from the ashes of what might be Manchester’s oldest mill. For the full story, you can read Ophira’s pre-fire and immediately post-fire reports on the Hotspur Press saga here and here.
‘Ethnic Realignment and Panic on the Streets of Manchester’
It turns out that social media hysteria is not confined to Manchester’s playground fights. While we reported on the brawl at Audenshaw School that was picked up by the national press last week, an Iranian vigil and counter protest in the city centre earlier this month has been picked up by the international press. Videos from the rallies have been going so viral that the Wall Street Journal published a think piece headlined ‘Ethnic Realignment and Panic on the Streets of Manchester’, and the Hungarian Conservative wrote an article titled ‘Video of Islamist Horsemen Chasing Anti-Khamenei Protestors in UK Sparks Outrage’. You’d be forgiven, then, for envisioning scenes of bedlam as those mourning the death of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, came face to face with opponents of the Iranian regime. But of the 800 attendees there were no arrests and the protests were largely peaceful — save for a few reported skirmishes as the groups headed home near the end of the night.
What gripped people’s attention were videos of two men on horseback, believed to be supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran (this remains unconfirmed). Footage shows them trotting through crowds, being stopped by police and asked to leave, and trotting away. Counter protestors reported that the horses’ presence felt threatening and that the men had ridden towards them, but those accusations morphed on social media into allegations of two-tier policing of ‘Sharia law patrols’ by ‘the Muslim brotherhood’. One Instagram reel filmed by an auditor shows the men speaking to police with the text ‘SHARIA PATROLS IN MANCHESTER’ superimposed on the footage; it has over 1.8m views. Over on TikTok images of the men wearing armbands with ‘sharia law’ written on them gained traction, and allegations circulated that police had been told not to intervene. But the MEN has since debunked much of the rhetoric, reporting that their journalists didn’t see horses chasing anyone, and have suggested the ‘sharia law’ armband images are fake, after comparing them to their own photos showing the riders wearing reflective strips with no text. GMP have said claims of lawlessness and charging horses are “totally incorrect”, and drew attention to a wider media landscape where “cynical” content creators can monetise extreme footage.
Is Burnham failing the poor?
The GMCA report we surfaced last week — which detailed how Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester Housing Investment Loans Fund (GMHILF) helped turn fledgling builder Renaker into the biggest developer in the city with taxpayer-backed loans — ended up on the frontpage of the Telegraph’s business section. The paper said the report showed “Burnham’s £1bn skyscraper plan fails poor” in that only 4% of the homes financed by the GMHILF (503 of 10,974) are affordable. Though it ought to be said that, outside of the GMHILF, the combined authority has committed hundreds of millions to deliver affordable homes, and helped build 3,044 last year with other funding. The GMCA told the Telegraph that the fund helped “rebuild confidence in Greater Manchester’s housing market” and support other projects.
And finally, just the £9.25 for this pint of Moretti at the AO Arena last night, as posted on Reddit. Do tell us Millers, have you ever paid £9.25 or more for a pint in Manchester? If not, how high have you gone?
This week’s weather
Tuesday 🌥️ Cloudy for a while, then brightening up from the south later in the afternoon. Breezy and mild. Max 14°c.
Wednesday 🌤️ Dry, pleasantly warm, and mostly sunny. Light winds. Max 18°c.
Thursday ⛅ Sunny during the morning but turning cloudier into the afternoon. Staying dry. Max 18°c.
Friday ⛅ Dry and calm but with mostly cloudy skies. Feeling cooler. Max 14°c
Weekend 🌥️Remaining dry and settled but feeling cool due to easterly winds, which will also feel in patchy cloud cover at times.
Home of the Week
A camellia bush in the front garden and a lavender tree out the back over at this two-bed in Stretford. All yours for £265,000.
Our writers recommend
🍀 It’s St Patrick’s day tomorrow, and given Guinness’s absurd rise in popularity, the growing cultural domination of the Irish (congrats Jessie Buckley), and the fact 50% of city centre pubs have rebranded to cash in, it couldn’t be a better time to be celebrating in Manchester. Professional Guinness critic Prime Mutton is hosting a meet up at the Bay Horse Tavern in NQ, but the Mill HQ line is to just get one at your local. So we’ll be at Sam’s Chophouse, as we are for every St Patrick’s day (and most Tuesdays in general).
💃 Mastering Latin American dancing has somehow made it onto Lucy’s agenda, so she’ll be heading to On Bar in the city centre tonight. They’re hosting free salsa classes at 6:30pm every Monday until the end of March, and luckily for her you don’t need a partner or previous experience to get involved. Just book a ticket on Skiddle, and make sure you’ve also got a free class voucher on their website here.
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