Extreme violence and 50-hour waits in Greater Manchester’s A&E departments

Plus: The City Council’s ex-chief stands accused of anti-semitism, questions remain over New Year floods, and Manchester’s new burger pop-up comes under fire

Dear Millers — the great thaw has begun. We were trudging through thick snow up on Saddleworth Moor this weekend (scroll down for a gorgeous picture of an icy Christmas tree) but the sub-zero temperatures are over for now and the forecast looks mild (and dry) for the rest of the week, but beware of overnight frost.

In today’s briefing, we bring you a dispatch from a pop-up restaurant “exploring the notion of fast food from a social and historical context” that charges £12.50 for a burger, some good news as a government body launches an investigation into the business rates scammers preying on Manchester’s small business and some much less good news from our local hospitals.

A warm welcome to the new members who joined up this weekend after reading Joshi’s long read on Elon Musk and the allegations of a massive cover-up of grooming gangs in Oldham. “This is journalism at its best, whether local or otherwise,” one member commented, amidst some interesting discussion between readers about whether a new inquiry into sexual abuse in Oldham is a good idea. Michael Taylor said he worried about endless inquiries with limited scopes (“The politics of populism, by its nature, is a demand for easy answers to complicated questions, of which this is one depressing example”) whereas Ross Denton argued that “the only way to lance this boil is to have a full and open investigation a la the Horizon scandal.” If you haven’t already, join in with the discussion under the piece here.

We’ve noticed recently we’re getting lots more shares on Bluesky, where Sam Thorpe said he had just joined us as a member because in these challenging times, “paying for quality local news is essential” while Tom Jolliffe called the Oldham story “Brilliant true journalism by The MIll.”

And some important news: after four and a half years, we are leaving the Substack platform. There’s more information about that below — including an urgent message to 2,350 of you who read us via the Substack app rather than email will stop getting The Mill unless you join our mailing list.

---

Unmissable networking and career advice at the Better Business Summit

From today’s sponsor: Can you stick to your values and make it in the business world? Companies who have proved you can do just that — including Patagonia, TicketTailor, and Seasalt — are getting together in Manchester next week for two transformative days. It’s a chance to change your thinking, find your leadership style and meet others who are committed to making the world a better place through their work.

For Mill readers, there’s a bonus 30% off the ticket price — just head to this link and use the code MILL30 at the checkout.

---

Important: The Mill is leaving Substack

Tomorrow we’re going live with a new Mill website, which means we will be moving off the Substack platform. We made this decision a few months ago so that we can build our own independent tech, including using a great non-profit publishing tool called Ghost. Doing this means that we save a lot of money (currently, 10% of our income from members goes to Substack) and invest it into our journalism. It also means we can maintain a more direct relationship with you, our readers, rather than having it mediated via a tech platform.

For most of you, this won’t make much difference to your experience of The Mill. You’ll need to create a new account to comment on our new site, but it takes ten seconds and we will guide you through it in the coming days.

But for 2,350 of you, you will not get The Mill anymore unless you join our mailing list now. The reason for this is that 2,350 of you are “followers” rather than email subscribers, meaning that you signed up to read us via Substack but you do so via the Substack app or online site rather than receiving our stories in your email inbox.

So, here’s the deal:

• If you get our emails in your inbox, you’re fine. Your email (and your paid membership if you have one), will seamlessly transfer over to our new system.

• If you do not get our emails in your email inbox, and you only “follow” us via the Substack app or site, then the only way to carry on reading The Mill is to click here and join our mailing list. Please do this immediately because we won’t prompt you again after tomorrow.

This move is the first step in our journey to building more independent technology for ourselves. We’ll have our own custom website starting tomorrow, and in future we hope to build our own app as well. If you don’t hear from us in the next few days, please e-mail info@millmediaco.uk and we’ll look into it for you.

---

⛅️ This week’s weather

Tuesday ☁️ Overcast with drizzle and patchy light rain. 9°C.

Wednesday 🌤️ Dry with sunny spells and light winds. Frosty overnight. 9°C.

Thursday ☀️ Dry with long spells of winter sunshine accompanied by light winds. 8°C.

Friday ⛅️ Dry again with hazy sunny spells but turning breezy. 8°C.

Weekend ☁️ Predominantly settled and dry but quite cloudy too, with chilly temperatures.

We get our weekly forecast from Manchester Weather.

---

Your briefing

🏥 A nurse has suffered life-changing injuries after being stabbed by a member of the public while on duty in Royal Oldham Hospital’s acute medical unit on Saturday night. Greater Manchester Police say a 37-year-old man remains in custody on suspicion of attempted murder, adding: “we do not believe there to be a threat to the wider public”. On Sunday, the Daily Mail reported the assailant was a patient who was angry about A&E waiting times, but the police are yet to confirm the attacker’s motive and identity. The health secretary Wes Streeting has publicly condemned the attack, saying health workers “should be able to care for patients without fear of violence”.

🩺 Two patients at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan have reported waiting over 50 hours for a hospital bed, according to the MEN. On Saturday 4th January, the A&E department was said to be so busy that “people were pinching seats”, according to Dean Jennings, 39, who was rushed to hospital in an ambulance after collapsing at home. “It wasn’t until Tuesday when I got put in a proper ward,” Jennings told the MEN. “They were doing my blood transfusions on the corridor.”

🍔 Humbug — a new pop-up at KAMPUS operated by not-quite-Michelin restaurant Where the Light Gets In — has been getting some flack online. All of its burgers have come from one cow named Maraschino, and when they run out (there’s 1,400), they’re gone. The restaurant’s owner Sam Buckley said it is a “response to transparency in fast food restaurants around the world” and that “we are also exploring the notion of fast food from a social and historical context throughout this whole month.” Buckley was skinny on the details of how that’ll be done, beyond charging £12.50 for burgers. Over the weekend we dropped in, and spent some £40 on a burger, fries, a beer and some fried oysters (we didn’t get the oysters’ names). For those considering a visit, note there’s no ventilation, so you’re going to leave smelling of Maraschino, just not in the way that sounds.

💰 Business rates scam companies Rateable Value Experts and ReRates UK have been suspended by the Valuation Office Agency while it investigates “a serious breach” of its professional standards. Both companies are based in Greater Manchester and Rateable Value Experts were responsible for attempting to scam Carmelo and Chiara Signorelli, owners of the Sicilian restaurant Bar Etna in Altrincham, out of more than £4,000 by claiming they could cancel their business rates bill outright and threatening the Signorellis when they refused to pay (as we reported in June last year). The Valuation Office Agency says it will not accept any information from these companies or work with them while it investigates the potential breach.

Correction: a previous version of this newsletter said that a nurse suffered life-changing injuries after being stabbed while working at Oldham Royal’s A&E department. The incident actually occurred in the hospital’s acute medical unit. We have amended accordingly.

---

A pine tree on Saddleworth Moor, covered in snow and frost, photographed over the weekend by our editor Joshi Herrmann. Christmas trees grow naturally on the moor after a few trees escaped from the commercial plantation blocks of Christmas trees that were put on the moor in the 1950s and ‘60s.

---

Quick hits

🏛️ Joanne Roney, former chief executive of Manchester City Council, will stand trial later this year accused of calling a property agent a “massive Jewish bellend” in 2022. Currently managing director of Birmingham City Council, Roney and the council (also listed as a defendant in the case) deny the allegation.

🌊 Questions remain over the Environment Agency’s response to the New Year’s Day flooding. A report compiled by local councillor Andrew Simcock, seen by The Mill, asks whether things like skeleton staffing on the night caused flood gates to be opened late, and continues to criticise the lack of warnings sent to residents.

🏆 A University of Manchester research team has been awarded the prestigious Bezos Earth prize for their research into how we can enhance carbon capture and reduce methane emissions through peatland restoration.

Owen’s Park Tower, in Fallowfield. Photo: Joshi Herrmann/The Mill.

🗼 RIP to Owen’s Park Tower in Fallowfield, which is being slowly demolished as the University of Manchester makes way for ultra-modern new accommodation blocks to fix the student bed shortage. Known simply as ‘tower’, it closed in 2021 and was the most-hated or most-loved bit of student Fallowfield, depending on who you asked.

❓ Jon Pearce, High Peak’s Labour MP, wants to merge the area with Tameside or Stockport Council, but its locals don’t seem so sure. “This is country, (Manchester's) a city,” said Arthur Carrington, a Chapel-en-le-Frith resident, while others lament hearing the Manchester accent in the street. “I want to stay as we are,” said Dawn Goodwin.

📻 In case you missed it the first time, you can listen to God Next Door on BBC Radio 4 by clicking here. It’s an audio documentary about a landscape gardener in south Manchester who believes he is God. In the film, the would-be divine figure, called James, speaks at length to journalist Daryl Morris, and is seen telling his band of followers: “I am the word made flesh, I am back here now to be with you.”

---

Home of the week

£395,000 may be a little on the steeper end for our home of the week — but this 200-year-old five-bed was just too beautiful to pass over.

---

Our favourite reads

The ‘cult’-like church taking over London — and its links to Labour politicians — The Londoner

This stellar investigation into the disturbing world of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) by our sister site The Londoner, finds how the huge charity (which operates in Manchester, too) is more akin to a “dangerous cult”. ‘Former members say they were shown graphic pictures of the corpses of people who had died after they exited the church to dissuade them from making the same choice,’ writes Andrew Kearsley. “‘Fundraisers' for this organisation were all over Manchester City Centre throughout the Christmas period,” commented one reader. “I dread to think how much money they took in.”

Squatters, George Formby, and Child Trafficking: A Visit to Hulme Hippodrome — STAT Magazine

We enjoyed this retrospective photo essay on the squatters of Hulme Hippodrome by Dean Cooper in Stat Magazine. Visiting the abandoned theatre in 2017, Cooper met those calling it home, capturing the faded glory of its once-grand performance hall, all peeling wallpaper, cracked fixtures and cans of Dark Fruits. Also scattered around were remnants from its time under Gilbert Deya, a miracle preacher who left behind cassette tapes (a little) suspiciously labeled: ‘I AM NOT A CHILD TRAFFICKER. I AM A PREACHER’. He had been extradited to Kenya on allegations of child theft.

Luke Littler conquered the darts world. A new generation wants in — The Post

Our sister title in Liverpool, The Post, investigates the “Littlermania” sweeping the UK, and specifically the northwest, speaking to the 17-year-old darts prodigy’s boyhood coach, Karl Holden. Holden founded the St Helen’s Youth Darts Academy — where Littler trained — and has watched the interest from younger generations climb in tandem with Littler’s rise. “We had 95 kids turn up last night. We normally average about 80 anyway, but it’s very, very busy indeed.”

---

Our to do list

Tuesday

🎫 Choreographer and performer Urja Desai Thakore will be taking to the Lowry tomorrow for her solo dance piece ROOH: Within Her, inspired by ancient Tamil literature. Tickets are £15.

🎭 Ukrainian play Mariupol Drama is being performed at HOME this week, starting tomorrow and running until Saturday. Directed by Yevhen Tyshchuk, the 60-minute play tells the survival stories of actors who were sheltering inside the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, during the tragic events of March 2022.

Wednesday

🧘 SANTÉ Didsbury are hosting a Yin & Gin sober event for those who are still managing Dry January. Join them for a yoga session, followed by a “refreshing drink” (presumably alcohol-free gin, judging by the name of the event, but don’t quote us on that). Tickets cost £24.54, with the class and drink included.

🎹 From 11:30 to 13:30, The University of Manchester’s Contemporary and Experimental Ensemble will be performing a new version of Clash, a piece by Award-winning Hong Kong composer Israel Lai. This event is free to attend.

Thursday

🤿 Author Rob Parker will be at Blackwell’s bookshop on Thursday for the launch of his new crime novel The Troubled Deep, in which a deep sea diver unearths the secrets to a long-buried case. Tickets are only £4, or free with a copy of the book.

🚖 As part of the ‘Factory Lates’ series at Aviva Studios, DJ and designer Amrit Randhawa of Taxi Cab Industries will be hosting an evening celebrating Bradford’s lesser-known musical icons. “From Bhangra to Bassline, and qawwali to car culture,” Randhawa will be exploring the unrecognised pioneers of the North’s British-Asian working-class culture. Tickets are free, and you can book them here.

Thanks to the Better Business Summit for sponsoring this edition. If you want to make a big change for your career or business in 2025, then buy a ticket here with the code MILL30.