Dear readers — today (well, technically, yesterday) is a momentous day for The Mill. Because, as you’ll see if you click over to our website, we’ve just launched a new campaign.
We now have two weeks to reach a huge new milestone: our first 5,000 paying members. At the time of writing, we have around 450 to go.
So there’s never been a better fortnight to sign up to The Mill. We’re currently running a discount of just £6.95 a month for your first two months, or, hugely: Just £69 for a whole year.
Plus, if you sign up and become one of our first 5,000 Millers (or, of course, if you already are one of our first 5,000) you can have your name printed on our next physical newspaper edition of The Mill — and you’ll be invited to our post-campaign party!
Last year over 1,000 Greater Mancunians backed our six pledges to the city, which included teaching fact-checking in schools, starting a good news edition and supporting first-time voters with free subscriptions. We’ve already done all this and more; including making sure all students at University of Manchester have free access to The Mill (we hope to do this with Salford and Man Met too!).
Since then, The Mill has become More than News, and we want to continue increasing our presence in communities across Greater Manchester. If you’d like to support us in that work, become one of the 5,000 below.
And if you are, please help us reach our target by sending this newsletter to someone who you think will love The Mill! You can also send them a gift subscription using this button below.
Ok, now your newsletter, which includes: an expert’s critique of Liam Gallagher’s accent; a series of confusing road signs; and a call-out for anyone who’s ever been fined for dropping a cig.
Employees' rights have changed - here's what you need to know
The Employment Rights Act 2025 is a major change in company law, with huge impacts on recruitment, retention and employee engagement. There's a lot to take in, but AAB, an accountancy and professional services firm which has just expanded into the city, is here to help.
Louise McCosh, AAB’s Head of People, has written a deep dive into what the Act actually means for Manchester businesses. It expertly decodes the legalese and provides practical insights to help you do right by your staff and get the best out of them. Click below to read the report.
Interested in sponsoring The Mill? Get in touch.
Remembering Yom Kippur 2025
Yesterday and today mark Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Last Yom Kippur, Jihad Al-Shamie drove his car into Heaton Park synagogue and began attacking worshippers with a knife. Melvin Cravitz, 66, was killed in the attack; and Adrian Daulby, 53, was accidentally shot dead by police who attended the scene.
We wrote two articles about the attack at the time, and we’d like to direct you back to them. The first, we published on the day, reporting from Crumpsall in the immediate aftermath of the killings. The second was published a few days later and written by Ophira. She visited the home her family lived in for three generations, and told the story of Muslim and Jewish lives in North Manchester through the eyes of her grandmother Ruth Morris, and Mohammed Khan, a shopkeeper who runs a minimarket on the land her grandmother’s house once stood. You can read the former here, and the latter below.
Ophira Gottlieb
The voices of Greater Manchester
Rob Drummond, a sociolinguist at MMU who led a project mapping how accents change across Greater Manchester, was on Radio 4 over the weekend talking about his new book on the subject: Manchester Voices, Accents, Dialects and Identities. “I used to be an English Language teacher, and I was teaching English as a second language,” Drummond told Michael Rosen. “I was teaching in Manchester and I had lots of Polish students at the time and was intrigued as to why some of them seemed to be learning English with a Manchester accent and some of them weren’t. That became my PhD.” You can listen to Drummond and Rosen dissect the accents of Liam Gallagher and Sara Cox here. You can also read Jack Dulhanty’s 2022 interview with Drummond, reflecting on the project and how he lost his own Salford accent to his militantly well-spoken Gran.
What a fine neighbourhood!
Manchester City Council has raked in £733,000 in parking fines from just 29 parking bays in the city centre. St John Street — part of a leafy enclave off of Deansgate where the likes of Gary Neville has a property, and where the council’s once-CEO Joanne Roney also lived — had a single yellow line painted on it in January 2024. Figures obtained via FOI by ParkAppeal (a site that helps people appeal parking tickets) found the new line led to a doubling of parking charge notices issued on the street, going from 3,037 in 2023/2024 to 6,795 in 2024/2025.
Baby steps to No. 10 North
If you think you’ve been hearing a few more southern accents in the city centre lately, you’re not imagining things. The Westminster “bubble”, as it were, is floating hesitantly towards Manchester, lured in by No. 10 North and, maybe, Slug and Lettuce. The Financial Times reported this morning that everything from public affairs firms to media outlets are eyeing up new spots in the city, while existing Manchester-based companies beef up their operations. Chris Oglesby, chief executive at Bruntwood, one of Manchester’s biggest commercial landlords, said they’ve seen plenty of interest from London-based agencies. Oglesby told the FT: “Number 10 North’s launch has acted as a catalyst, but what’s more significant is that these moves reflect genuine long-term bets on where power and decision-making are heading.”
Hello! Ophira here — editor of The Mill, co-host of the Run of The Mill podcast and scourge of Manchester’s local tour-guiding scene.
This week, we’re launching a campaign to pick up 500 new members. New subscribers can join for a discounted £6.95 for their first two months or £69 for their first year. Why are we doing this? Because it would take us to a grand total of 5,000 paying subscribers, a huge milestone for us, and for local journalism in Greater Manchester.
Speaking as an editor, 5,000 subscribers would allow The Mill to give more young journalists in Manchester a start as freelance writers, video editors and photographers. It would also allow us to tell more of the stories we aren’t currently telling across all ten of Greater Manchester’s boroughs.
To join today, hit the button below. The 500 subscribers will be able to have their names in our next print edition, and be invited to a special members event celebrating us hitting 5,000 subscribers.
The mystery of Manchester’s roadside prankster
Something strange is going on. Only recently, staff writer Lucy was stumped as she approached a set of traffic lights while driving through Chorlton. She’d been following a diversion route, but at these lights was not one yellow ‘diverted traffic’ sign, but two, both pointing in opposite directions. A bizarre prank, but not one to dwell on. However, the plot has thickened: Mill reader Helen sent us the below photo yesterday, informing us that she has “seen at least two of these helpful signs” around Manchester in recent weeks.
Who would do such a thing — and what might their motive be? Have you fallen victim to the double-sign-diversion hoax? Do you have your suspicions as to the culprit, or are you the culprit? Please spill.
And a note from The Mill
We recently received a complaint from Stephen Garvey, the principal of Cedar Mount Academy, regarding a story we published about the school in July. We stand by this important public interest story, but we have made a few changes to the online version, including removing the word “worryingly” from a description of a conversation he had about a teacher’s blood pressure, and specifying that he rejects our account of an interaction he had with another staff member. We have also corrected the number of times a staff member says Mr Garvey was approached about a teacher’s workload; it was once to Mr Garvey, and twice to the school’s vice-principal, rather than three times to both. We have added a note to the story about these changes and we apologise to Mr Garvey for the errors. (We always welcome feedback about our reporting and will be transparent about errors that are pointed out — please contact editor@manchestermill.co.uk if you ever want to raise something with us.)
Open newsroom: binning butts and making bucks
Have you ever been fined for dropping a cigarette butt in Manchester? We want to hear from you.
And also: we’re currently working on a piece about how much Mancunians are making. If you’re up for sharing with us how much you make — plus your name, age, and letting us snap a pic of you, please let us know here! This piece will surely be a banger.
This Thursday: Should we still be gawping at human remains?
On Thursday, we're heading to Manchester Museum to debate its recent bombshell decision to take the mummified remains of Asru off display.
Click below to grab one of the last remaining tickets.
Home of the week
Soot-dusted industrial red brick on the outside, marble and bling on the inside? How about a room with an astroturf for carpet? Sound like a bit of you? Then this five bed house in Longsight is going to auction starting at £280,000.
This week’s weather
Our swashbuckling weatherman Martin Miles comes with no promise of heatwaves, which we’re personally okay with, but instead “a decent week of weather for late September.” Lovely.
Tuesday ⛅ Dry, calm, and pleasant with bright spells. Max 20°C.
Wednesday 🌦️ Wet during the morning before an improvement to sunny spells during the afternoon. Breezy and cooler. Max 17°C.
Thursday ⛅ Dry with long spells of sunshine and just a light breeze. Feeling warmer. Max 20°C.
Friday ⛅ Mostly dry with sunny spells, but there will be a risk of showers later in the day. Feeling pleasantly warm. Max 21°C.
Weekend 🌦️ Less settled with more of a changeable mix of sunny spells and a few showers, although still quite warm for late September.
This week’s recommendations
🏛️ On Thursday we host the latest in our popular events series. We’re at Manchester Museum, asking if taking the mummified remains of an Egyptian woman named Asru was the right thing for Manchester Museum to do. Tickets are selling fast, get yours while you can.
🎭 Tony and Olivier award nominated director Carrie-Anne Ingrouille launches his adaptation of the Little Shop of Horrors at Hope Mill Theatre on Friday. The show is undertaking a mammoth two-month run, and tickets for all shows are available here.
⚔️ Mill writer and battle reenactment apologist Jack Dulhanty will be marauding in the plains of Chetham Library this Sunday at its Medieval Faire. Entrance is free and middle age garb is optional. More information is available on its website.
🏀 After falling in the semi-finals of the Super League last year, Manchester Basketball kick of their campaign with new recruits and a promising outlook on Sunday, against Surrey 89ers. Tickets for the game at National Basketball Performance Centre, Gorton are on sale now.
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