Category Archives: Manchester

‘Don’t write me off because I’m in a wheelchair’: Manchester Arena survivor takes on Kilimanjaro

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Martin Hibbert, who was 5 metres from the deadly explosion, is now tackling Africa’s highest mountain

It was a month after the Manchester Arena attack when Martin Hibbert learned the catastrophic toll of his injuries. He and his 14-year-old daughter, Eve, on a “daddy daughter day” to an Ariana Grande concert, were 5 metres from the explosion that killed 22 people and injured hundreds more in May 2017.

Hibbert, 45, from Chorley in Lancashire, was told he would never walk again. Eve would probably never see, hear, speak or move – if she made it out of hospital. They were the closest to the bomb to survive.

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Supermodel Karen Elson on fashion’s toxic truth: ‘I survived harassment, body shaming and bullying – and I’m one of the lucky ones’

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She has been at the top of the industry for decades. Now she’s speaking out about the dark reality of life behind the scenes

When Karen Elson was a young hopeful trying to make it in Paris, a model scout took her to a nightclub. After long days on the Métro trekking to castings that came to nothing, and evenings alone in a run-down apartment, she was excited to be out having fun. The music was good and the scout, to whom her agent had introduced her, kept the drinks coming. She started to feel tipsy. A friend of the scout’s arrived, and the pair started massaging her shoulders, making sexual suggestions. “I was 16 and I’d never kissed a boy,” she recalls. “It was my first experience of sexual – well, sexual anything, and this was sexual harassment. They both had their hands on me.”

She told them she wanted to go home, and left to find a taxi, but they followed her into it, kissing her neck on the back seat. When they reached her street, she jumped out, slammed the taxi door and ran inside. The next day she told another model what had happened, and the scout found out. “His reaction was to corner me in the model agency and say: ‘I’ll fucking get you kicked out of Paris if you ever fucking say anything ever again.’”

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‘They’re in the way’: Manchester rebels against grey advertising boxes

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Pedestrians call them ugly and a nuisance but council says money is sorely needed after years of cuts

Earlier this year, Manchester city council declared ambitions to become a pedestrian paradise. “We want walking to be the main way people get around the city centre,” proclaimed the town hall’s transport plan. “Pavements and public spaces will be high quality, well-maintained, green and accessible – catering for everyone, no matter what their age or mobility.”

Yet this autumn, 86 mysterious grey boxes were plonked on pavements across the city which did pretty much the opposite. Measuring more than a metre across, the metal monoliths obstructed the footway, failing what transport engineers call “the double buggy test” while upsetting wheelchair users and aesthetes alike.

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Yorkshire police poster warns against trick or treating this Halloween

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Force says it is discouraging the activity this year along with organised events because of Covid

A police force in the north of England is trying to discourage children from trick or treating this Halloween because of Covid-19.

South Yorkshire police (SYP) have produced a poster residents can print out and put in their windows saying “No trick or treaters”, with a picture of a silhouetted pumpkin crossed out like a no-entry sign.

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Manchester Arena bombing: MI5 officer accepts ‘different actions would have stopped plot’

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Salman Abedi was not stopped and questioned on return to UK from Libya, inquiry hears

A senior MI5 officer has accepted that stopping and questioning the Manchester Arena terrorist, Salman Abedi, when he returned to the UK from Libya could have led police to the bomb.

The inquiry being held into the atrocity, which killed 22 concertgoers and injured hundreds of others, was hearing evidence from an intelligence officer given the pseudonym Witness J.

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‘The most difficult journey of my life’: an Afghan family’s escape to the UK

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One of just six female judges who have so far managed to reach Britain speaks of fleeing Kabul and finding refuge in Manchester

The day the Taliban arrived in Kabul, Dina* went to her office in the city’s law courts as normal. It was deserted. “Only the cleaner was there,” the 41-year-old supreme court judge remembers. “The cleaner said: what are you doing here? Go home!”

Dina gathered as many legal papers and personal documents as she could carry and drove back to the four-storey home she shared with her husband and three children. There, she scanned in the most important bits of paper and burned the lot on her roof terrace. It was painful watching evidence of everything she worked so hard to achieve going up in flames.

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English cities to receive transport boost of almost £7bn in budget

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Funding will be used to help ‘level up’ regions including Greater Manchester and West Midlands

Almost £7bn will be allocated in next week’s budget to “level up” urban transport in cities around England, the government has said.

City regions will receive a total of about £5.7bn in sustainable transport cash, while another £1.2bn will go towards improving bus services.

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Manchester Arena bomber’s brother leaves UK before inquiry testimony

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Ismail Abedi had been ordered to attend hearing, as childhood friend arrested trying to leave country

The older brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber has left the UK and there is no indication of whether he will return in time to give evidence this week to the public inquiry into the atrocity, it has emerged.

The bomber’s childhood friend Ahmed Taghdi tried to leave the country on Monday as well but was arrested, the public inquiry was told on Tuesday.

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Our art deals with real injustices, some in Palestine: no wonder we faced opposition « Forensic Architecture

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Our battle to restore a statement to a Manchester exhibition was really about what can and can’t be said in cultural spaces

On Wednesday, protesters in Manchester reclaimed one of the city’s main cultural institutions. Despite the rain, pro-Palestine activists gathered in front of the closed doors of the Whitworth gallery, part of the University of Manchester. It was because of their persistent action, and 13,000 letters sent to the gallery, that part of our exhibition, a printed statement titled “Forensic Architecture stands with Palestine”, has been reinstated. The exhibition, which we insisted be shut as a result of the statement’s unilateral removal, has now reopened.

On Sunday 15 August, a blog post on the website of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) announced that, following the group’s intervention, the statement had been removed from our exhibition, Cloud Studies. When we first heard of the news, we were not altogether surprised. The same group had already criticised a statement of solidarity with Palestinians published on the Whitworth’s website in June, and succeeded in convincing the university to have it removed. And this was hardly UKLFI’s first attack on us as an organisation. In 2018, when we were nominated for the Turner prize, UKLFI urged the Tate not to award the prize to us on the outrageous grounds that documents that we had published in relation to Palestine amounted to “modern blood libels likely to promote antisemitism and attacks on Jews”.

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Conditions that led to 2011 riots still exist today, experts warn

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Data analysis finds large-scale cuts to youth services and increase in racial disparity 10 years on

The conditions that led to riots across England 10 years ago still exist today, experts have warned, as data analysis showed significant cuts to youth services in affected areas and an increase in racial disparity in stop and search.

On 4 August 2011, police officers shot and killed Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old mixed-race man, in Tottenham, north London. His death sparked a wave of civil unrest that started the capital and spread to other cities, causing property damage to the value of £40m a day.

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‘A lasting legacy of tolerance’: Marcus Rashford messages to be preserved

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Notes left on defaced Manchester mural will be removed to protect from rain, amid plans for digital exhibition

Thousands of messages left on the mural of footballer Marcus Rashford in Manchester will be removed and preserved on Friday, to protect them from forecasted rain this weekend.

A team of archivists and conservators will detach the tributes so they are preserved for future generations to mark the national moment of solidarity that followed the mural being defaced and a torrent of racist abuse was targeted at the player on social media, as well as England teammates Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho.

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UK trial aims to find hidden lung damage caused by long Covid

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Study is part of £20m research drive that scientists hope will end stigma around the condition

A clinical trial has been launched to detect currently invisible lung damage in people with long Covid, as part of a £20m research drive that scientists hope will end stigma around the condition.

Patients still suffering breathlessness will be drawn from long Covid clinics in Sheffield, Manchester and Cardiff to undergo special scans using xenon gas to reveal damage that does not show up on conventional CT scans, leading to a mystery about why people are not getting better.

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Manchester shows support for Marcus Rashford: ‘It’s evolved into something special’

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Community comes together to back England footballer and oppose racism after mural was defaced

“We’re going to take the knee like the footballers do,” said Nahella Ashraf, leading a crowd of at least 300 people in performing the anti-racism gesture in front of the freshly repainted mural of Marcus Rashford on Tuesday evening.

Ashraf, a member of Manchester Stand Up to Racism, said she aimed to show “we are the majority” after the mural was defaced in the wake of England’s Euro 2020 final defeat.

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New Manchester park to use Victorian wells to water greenery

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Mayfield Park will be watered using wells discovered while archaeologists were on site

Manchester’s first public park for more than a century will use recently uncovered wells from the Victorian era to provide a sustainable source of water.

The 2.6-hectare (6.5-acre) Mayfield Park will sit behind Piccadilly station and provide play areas and floodable meadows. The £1.4bn development’s greenery will be watered using three Victorian wells that were discovered while archaeologists were on site to catalogue historical features of the site.

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‘Jaw-dropping’ fall in life expectancy in poor areas of England, report finds

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Sir Michael Marmot’s report says Covid figures from Manchester reveal sharp decline in social conditions

Boris Johnson’s post-Covid “levelling up” agenda will fail unless it addresses declining life expectancy and deteriorating social conditions in England’s poorest areas, a leading authority on public health has warned, as he published figures showing the impact of the pandemic on Greater Manchester.

Sir Michael Marmot revealed the coronavirus death rate in Greater Manchester was 25% higher than the England average during the year to March, leading to “jaw-dropping” falls in life expectancy and widening social and health inequalities across the region over the past year.

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Scotland’s Covid travel ban extended to Manchester and Salford

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Nicola Sturgeon prohibits non-essential travel as Delta variant spreads through north of England

Nicola Sturgeon has imposed a travel ban between Scotland and Manchester and Salford as a result of rising Covid cases.

The restrictions, which will come into force from Monday, add to travel limits put in place last month as the Delta variant spread rapidly through the north of England.

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The Hut Group strikes complex joint venture deal with SoftBank

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Deal values ‘yet to be formed’ technology division of THG at $6.3bn

The Hut Group (THG), the online retailer empire run by billionaire Matthew Moulding, has struck a complex joint venture deal with Japanese investment giant SoftBank that values a “yet to be formed” technology division of THG at $6.3bn (£4.5bn).

The deal, announced on Monday, values THG Ingenuity, which Moulding described as a “social media influencer platform” used to promote products, at about the same amount that the whole company floated at last year.

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British man who died in crush at Israeli festival is named as Moshe Bergman

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Bergman, 24, had been in Israel to train as a rabbi before dying at Mount Meron

A British man who died in a crowd crush at a Jewish festival in Israel has been named as Moshe Bergman.

The 24-year-old from Salford, Manchester, had been in the country to train to be a rabbi in Jerusalem. He had been living in the city for two years and had married 18 months ago.

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Police told man helping victims of arena attack to leave, inquiry hears

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Daren Buckley told armed police ‘somebody’s got to help’ people injured in Manchester Arena terror attack

A man has described attempting to give first aid to victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack but was told to leave by armed police, the independent public inquiry into the attack has heard.

Daren Buckley was leaving the Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017 with his son when the suicide bomb exploded, killing 22 people and injuring hundreds.

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One of world’s rarest toads bred in captivity for first time in Manchester

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Programme may help to ensure the survival of the critically endangered variable harlequin toad

One of the world’s rarest toads has been bred in captivity for the first time, thanks to the scientists at Manchester Museum.

The critically endangered variable harlequin toad, Atelopus varius, lives deep in the central American rainforests of Panama and Costa Rica, breeding only in turbulent streams filled with stones and boulders on which they lay their eggs.

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