Dear readers — let’s do it again. Last week we published a series of articles about different topics to do with Greater Manchester. It’ll be the same this week (though the topics will change), and the week after that, and so on and so forth forever until you all get bored of us or some kind of force majeure wipes the city region out for good. That hasn’t happened yet though, it’s still here, as are you, reading our articles and often writing us lovely emails and comments of encouragement. For that, we couldn’t be more thankful.
Become a houseplant pro at RHS Garden Bridgewater
From today’s sponsor: RHS Garden Bridgewater is joined by the British Cactus and Succulent Society next weekend (30th to 31st August) to celebrate all things succulent and spiky. Learn the basics with their beginner guide on how to successfully cultivate and propagate these plants, in beautiful garden surroundings. Then find the next unusual succulent or cactus in your collection from the stalls run by expert vendors. To learn more about the event, click below.
Catch up and coming up
- Mill debutant Lucy Warm spent her Friday evening at the Grafton Arms to find out how the Manchester dyke scene is faring upon her return to the city.
- On Thursday Michael Taylor reported on one of Manchester’s most storied institutions, the Chamber of Commerce, which is facing big problems after 230 years of operation.
- Our weekend read was a saunter down one of the city’s best-loved and most inaccurately-named roads, the Curry Mile, which is neither a mile long nor particularly heavy on the curry.
- Looking forward, we’ve got another Mill debut on Wednesday, with Maira Rana meeting Manchester’s burgeoning Khaleeji community, to find out why an increasing number of arrivals from the gulf are choosing Manchester instead of London.
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🌤️ This week’s weather
Tuesday ⛅️ Breezy and mostly cloudy with a little drizzle early on. 20°c.
Wednesday ⛅️ Breezy and dry with cloud breaking to sunny spells. 21°C.
Thursday 🌤️ Dry and bright with plenty of sunny spells. Light winds. 22°C.
Friday 🌤️ Warm with sunny spells and light winds. 22°C.
Weekend 🌤️ Warm and mostly dry with good spells of sunshine. Temperatures low to mid-twenties.
Your briefing
🏠 Last week, ten teenagers and their parents set off on a journey that has now been made four times in 25 years: from refugee camps in the Algerian desert to Levenshulme, Manchester. They were Saharawis, now in their fiftieth year of exile from their native Western Sahara, after being driven out by invading Moroccan forces in 1975. In the refugee camps where they now live food and water are scarce and temperatures can reach 58°C. There are roughly 200,000 of them. In 2000, a tight-knit group of community organisers and activists in Levenshulme decided they wanted to give young Saharawis a chance to eat a healthy diet and learn new skills. “We got these amazing young people who had never seen satsumas, didn’t understand electricity, saw a bath filling up with water and couldn’t understand it,” says Andy Pitts, a co-founder of the Western Sahara Support Group and one of the first host families. “These kids are so different to us. We tried to give them different experiences, a bond of friendship.”
Saharawis with their host families in Levenshulme last week. With thanks to Andy Pitts for the photo.
Fatimatu Bachi made her first visit to Levenshulme in 2008, and says the trip inspired her to create a vegetable garden in the refugee camp in the Sahara desert. “I always knew our diet was not a good diet. When I came to Levenshulme, most people were vegan,” she said. “My mum wasn’t used to buying or cooking so many vegetables. It was lovely.” In harsh conditions, with strong winds and extreme temperatures, the vegetable garden has somehow yielded onions, carrots, courgettes, turnips, aubergines, lettuce, parsley, coriander and mint. Bachi credits the Western Sahara Support Group, founded in Levenshulme, for allowing her to keep prices affordable for refugees at the camp and donate food to those most in need. “I often ask myself where I’d be without the Manchester community,” Fatimatu says. “I think I’d be in a boat dead in the sea. It’s not something that I want to go through. I don’t personally want to die in the camps. And I don’t want my girls to live there. But thanks to the Manchester community, it’s a more peaceful place to live.”
👹 Some 500 Salford Red Devils fans marched to the rugby league team’s stadium yesterday in a protest against its current owners. The Mill was there as fans let off flares, chanted that Salford would “never die” and cursed both the new owners and the Rugby Football League (RFL) — the regulatory body that governs the sport. Since a consortium fronted by a Swiss businessman called Dario Berta took over in February the club has slipped into financial crisis. Unpaid players have quit, and a once formidable team has been decimated to a handful of players loaned from other clubs, or players as young as 16 from local academies. A fan group, the 1873 (the club’s founding year) sprung up to campaign against what they and others see as deliberate neglect by the owners, who they say have bought the club with an interest in developing the land that surrounds its stadium, which is currently owned by the council.
Fans outside the Salford Community Stadium. Photo: Jack Dulhanty/The Mill.
While Berta is the main name bandied around when talking about the consortium, it was revealed earlier this year that the driving force behind it is a Tongan former rapper named Isiosaia Kailahi and another man named Kurt Graver. These two have become the focus of the 1873’s ire. The group was meant to meet with Kailahi and Graver but pulled out after Salford’s Chief Operating Officer Claire Bradbury resigned. In her statement, she alleged that the ownership suggested she “sleep with someone at the RFL to help ‘smooth things over’” with reference to the troubles at the club. After that, the 1873 said it no longer wanted to meet, they just wanted the owners out. At yesterday’s march, fans spoke about the sense of community that underpins rugby league, which they feel is being ignored. Speaking about his fear of the club going into administration, 1873 member Nick Holt said “if Asda closes, people go to Tesco. Sports clubs aren’t like that. It’s where you meet your friends, even your wives. It’s a different thing.”
👮 The Home Office invested £53 million into a project co-founded by the developer of Dash – a domestic violence tool intended to identify people at high risk – despite concerns about the tool’s accuracy. In 2022, researchers at the University of Manchester found Dash, which is used by 24 police forces, wrongly classified more than 96% of cases as standard or medium risk. Just months later after the Home Office and special advisers to Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities, were warned about the assessment, the Home Office invested £53 million into Drive, co-led by the same company who developed Dash. The Times has the full story.
Quick hits
👙 Over in Knutsford, there’s a battle over who gets to use Pickmere Lake, a wild swimming spot with some sections of the shore owned by the council and others by private residents. Hundreds of visitors flock to the lake on hot days, with some parking in spaces that block driveways and pavements. In response, residents asked a farmer to plough the grass, making a part of the lake’s shore unusable. As there are legal rights of way through the fields along the lake’s edge, there will be questions for the council about whether the ploughing was lawful. Know more? Get in touch.
🎨 Blossom, a painting by the Manchester-born painter Chris Ofili, who became the first black artist to win the Turner Prize in 1998, is expected to fetch £1.5 million at auction in October. The piece is made from glitter, resin and elephant dung and draws on traditional ideas of motherhood.
🏠 Salford saw the biggest rent increases of any local authority in England and Wales in the past decade, according to ONS data. Rents jumped from £640 a month in 2015 to £1,121 per month in 2025 – a 75% increase.
Home of the week
Live the life of a 19th Century horse in this converted Victorian stable, in Prestwich. £475,000.
Our favourite reads
Want more productivity, Rachel Reeves? It’s time to embrace Mancunian swagger — Guardian
We enjoyed the Guardian’s senior economic correspondent Richard Partington’s take on replicating the so-called Manchester model across the country to increase productivity. Mill readers have had a lot on this recently from our economics analyst James Gilmour, who has been breaking down graphs showing how much Manchester is taking off. Partington also highlights the nagging fear that much of the benefits of this growth — particularly in the city centre — is lining pockets elsewhere. But on balance “[Rachel] Reeves could do with a few more Mancunian economic miracles,” Partington writes.
Disabled by a drug, ignored by ministers, these children are abandoned — The Times
The Times tell the stories of Lucy and Isobel Spencer, sisters from Tameside aged 16 and 18 years old, who are two of the thousands of children born with deformities because of anti-epilepsy drug sodium valproate. But because the risk was considered low, the drug’s capacity to cause abnormalities wasn’t highlighted by the committee on safety of medicines to avoid causing “fruitless anxiety”. Now, a growing number of voices are demanding answers. “There’s a lot of suffering going on here and I’m dismayed by the lateness of any meaningful response,” Conservative MP Jon Glen said. “It’s just not good enough.”
Exclusive: The billionaire developer closing London’s pubs — The Londoner
Meet the “meanest landlord in Britain”, Asif Aziz, who has been buying up pubs across the capital then closing them down. According to reporting in our London sister paper, his companies follow a formula of buying the properties, but only renewing the lease if the pubs pay much higher rents. He is, according to one interviewee, a “danger to urban life as we know it”. The piece also comes with a handy interactive map, helping you trace the shadow Aziz casts over London’s pub scene.
Our to do list
Tuesday
📸 Come Out Tonight: queer 90s nightlife is a new exhibition from photographers Stuart Linden Rhodes and Jon Shard, on display at Spinningfields as part of this year’s Manchester Pride. Shard’s photographs of gay night Flesh are some of the most recognisable images of the Haçienda.
✂️ And Track Brewing Co. are hosting a collaging workshop — bringing you a trove of rare magazines, vintage books, and journals, for you to demolish in the name of art.
Wednesday
📽️ Sett Art Cafe’s cult cinema night returns. This week they’re showing Ghost in the Shell — a 1995 film set in futuristic 2029, when brain hacking has become rampant. Fingers crossed they got that wrong. (Note: there is a 2017 live action remake, but it doesn’t look like a cult classic so we doubt they’re showing that one).
🕊️ And 7 to 18 year olds can head to Prestwich Library’s Pigeons and Doves Summer holiday writing club. This is actually on all week, and kids are welcome to attend all the workshops.
Thursday
📚 The Whitworth are hosting a reading circle, with the theme Talking Beasts and Trickster Tongues. There will be Persian talking birds and some sort of trickster Mousedeer hybrid.
🍽️ And coming back to Pride week, Portico Library are putting on a Pride Supper Club. Expect a book-inspired feast. There are only 12 seats available so get your tickets quick.
Got a To-Do that you’d like us to list? Tell us about it here.
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