Levenshulme Market to (sort of) return, a questionable Green Summit sponsor and Oldham’s child acting talent
Your unmissable guide to the week in Manchester
Dear readers — we hope you enjoyed our weekend read, which posed one of the most controversial questions we’ve ever dared ask: what if Manchester and Liverpool were to put aside their differences and form “a larger, combined urban area”? In the comments, Moira Sykes wrote in with her proposal for a path to unity: “Mancs need to be less miserable (is it the rain?) and Scousers less sensitive”. See what you think:
On with today’s edition, which asks why Andy Burnham’s environmental conference the Green Summit is sponsored by a water company notorious for dumping sewage in our rivers, gives you the latest on when a market will return to Levenshulme, and plenty more.
📚 Don’t miss your chance to attend The Past and Future of News — a conversation between Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, and Joshi Herrmann, founder of The Mill, at the stunning John Rylands Library on Thursday 16th January. Tickets are limited — get yours today by following the link below.
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☁️ This week’s weather
Tuesday ⛅️ Breezy and chilly. 7°C.
Wednesday ⛅️ Light winds and sunny periods. 7°C.
Thursday ☁️ Mostly cloudy with light winds. 6°C.
Friday ☁️ Mostly cloudy, cold and drizzly. 5°C.
Weekend ☁️ Remaining mostly cloudy with patchy light rain and drizzle.
We get our weekly forecast from Manchester Weather.
Your briefing
🌳 The Greater Manchester Green Summit was held at the Lowry today, featuring talks with titles like “Inspiring Change” and “Making It Happen” and a big announcement from Andy Burnham setting out the combined authority’s five-year environmental plan. The plan sets out the mayor’s ambition to build 30,000 affordable net zero homes, develop a fully integrated carbon-neutral tap-in tap-out public transport system and connect young people with jobs in “clean sectors” via the Manchester Baccalaureate. But the green credentials of some event sponsors weren’t entirely convincing — we couldn’t help noticing United Utilities, the water company with some of the highest sewage dumping rates in the country, among their number. We’ve asked via Freedom of Information request how much the GMCA received from their sponsorship, and we’ll have an update for readers in our end-of-week edition of The Mill.
🎪 Could Levenshulme Market be making a (sort of) return in spring? Earlier this year, Manchester City Council started gathering formal expressions of interest for a new operator for the site after its previous arrangement with the CIC Levy Market fell apart in June 2023. As Mollie reported last year, no-one really wanted the market to shut down, but a combination of local government law and an unwillingness from the CIC to enter into a profit-sharing agreement led to its downfall. We understand that process has now entered its final stages, with two unnamed contenders in the running. The CIC who ran the market from 2013 to 2023 did not apply.
🎶 For 17 years, Tony Wilson’s catalogue of unseen photos, untold stories, iconic posters and cartoons have been sitting in museum and library archive rooms in Manchester. A new Kickstarter campaign by Manchester design studio DR.ME wants to make the collection public to raise awareness of Wilson’s legacy as a music pioneer and journalist, promising to reinvest the profits into emerging musical talent in the region. The goal is to raise £5,000 — follow the link here to find out more.
Quick hits
🚌 Unison and TfGM resumed talks today in an attempt to reach an agreement for an improved pay offer for striking transport workers after a previous “inadequate” offer was rejected. Know anything more? Get in touch with Mollie.
👮 Police are investigating claims that stalking offences were committed against Mahmud Kamani, co-founder of fast fashion giant Boohoo, the company’s chief executive Dan Finley and former boss John Lyttle, with surveillance equipment discovered outside its Manchester HQ.
🏥 North Manchester General Hospital: A Department for Health spokesperson tells the MEN the government’s “position has not changed” since Wes Streeting said the plans to rebuild the crumbling hospital in 2025 needed to be reconsidered as part of the government’s spending review on new hospitals.
🧹 Two Oldham child actors had roles in the big-budget film Wicked. Karis Musongole, 10, plays young Elphaba, Harriet Ryan, 9, plays a munchkin, and both attend Elm Arts, a dance studio in Failsworth.
🏫 Altrincham Grammar School for Boys was the best performing school in Greater Manchester in the 2023/24 academic year, according to the Department for Education. Check out our education deep dive where we looked at the “Trafford miracle” — which found that while Trafford’s selective schools do very well, at most of its non-selective schools, students make less progress than their peers around the country.
Home of the week
This two-bedroom terrace in Bury is set back on a private cobbled street and has a large rear garden. £260,000.
AD: Light Lab — a free, family-friendly exploration into light and colour — is coming to The Science and Industry Museum this Christmas. Between Saturday 14 December and Sunday 5 January come along to discover how to bend, block and move light with fun experiments and challenges. The Museum is also screening a live recording of the first of the 2024 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where Dr Chris van Tulleken will be discussing how what we eat affects our bodies and our brains, bringing science to life through live demos and special guest appearances. It’ll be showing tomorrow — to book, click here. If you’d like to reach over 50,000 Mill readers in Greater Manchester, contact daniel@millmediaco.uk.
Our favourite reads
Why Wouldn’t ChatGPT Say This Dead Professor’s Name? — The New York Times
A strange story about David Mayer, a theatre professor in Manchester who died last year after spending the final years of his life facing “the cascading consequences of an unfortunate coincidence: A dead Chechen rebel on a terror watch list had once used Mr. Mayer’s name as an alias.” His transactions were frozen, important emails were blocked and his travel plans were scuppered as a result of the confusion, according to his family, while simply mentioning David Mayer’s name on ChatGPT seems to send the bot into a meltdown.
Anthony Burgess’s Napoleon complex — The New Statesman
The life and work of Anthony Burgess, born in Manchester in 1917, still has the power to dazzle. In 1942, he married Lynne Jones, who “often got into fist fights in pubs”, while Burgess himself was “a literary showman” who was also “no stranger to roughhousing”. In his strange modernist 1974 book Napoleon Symphony, he reveals a fascination with the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte “and glories in his wolfish appetite for food, wine, people, armies, countries, continents. At the same time, he never loses an opportunity to pull the rug from under him and put on display the dusty soles of his dainty little feet.”
The criminals were 'laughing' and the region felt lawless, but has the crackdown now gone too far? — The Manchester Evening News
In 2019, property manager Lee Wallwork suffered the indignity of having his caravan stolen. The police eventually received intelligence on the caravan’s whereabouts; they went to look for it a day later and it was gone again. Criminals are “laughing”, Wallwork told the MEN at the time, in a story about whether the police force had gone too soft on crime. But five years on, has the police force gone too hard on crime? This piece interrogates the use of dispersal orders, which give police powers to direct anyone suspected of causing trouble away from an area for up to 48 hours. Recent dispersal orders have covered the entirety of Bolton town centre and the whole of Manchester city centre. Is GMP a shining example of getting a grip on crime, or is it using a “blunt weapon” that criminalises young people?
Our to do list
Tuesday
⛪ Manchester Cathedral is hosting a festive concert to raise funds for The Christie Charity, which supports patients going through cancer treatment to make sure they have the best possible outcomes. Tickets here.
🎁 The Bolton Octagon is showing a musical adaptation of the well-loved fantasy-adventure The Jungle Book, get tickets here.
Wednesday
👛 Salford Museum and Art Gallery is hosting a £12 workshop where you can sew and paint your own leather purse, perfect for a last-minute Christmas gift.
🎤 Indie pop singer-songwriter Jo Hill is performing a free gig at the Carlton Club in Whalley Range, just reserve a place here.
Thursday
🎨 Sett Art Café in Didsbury offers creative after-school workshops for kids every Thursday from 3pm, with materials, hot chocolates, crêpes and coffees all included in the £5 price.
🎭 Spend Spend Spend is an award-winning musical showing at the Royal Exchange which documents a working-class Yorkshire woman who wins a fortune and becomes addicted to luxury. Tickets here.
Thanks to this week’s sponsor, The Science and Industry Museum.
The question around ethical sponsorship is a fascinating topic which I’d enjoy seeing the Mill explore further through a Mancunian lens.
Whilst I understand your point I’ve worked with united utilities and know there’s a lot of genuinely good people there, if this sponsorship helps facilitate the event going ahead whilst connecting some of those people with others doing good in the green space can that be a bad thing?
It feels particularly relevant at the moment in the world of arts and culture where most of the money funding the big players can be traced back to something ethically questionable, but as funding from other sources becomes scarcer is it even possible to do ethical fundraising / sponsorship?!
I'd be asking questions about giving stage time to Auto Trader who sponsor the GM green spaces fund all the while the importance of ditching the car in favour of walking, wheeling, cycling, and public transport was a big theme of the day. Strangely Andy Burnham didn't ask the representative from Auto Trader how they're supporting the transition away from car journeys.