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Hello,
The face of the city is changing all the time and it’s unrecognisable from the town we knew a couple of decades ago. But what would it look like if things were left to Artificial Intelligence?
For reasons known only to himself - perhaps he’s in league with the robots - reporter Damon Wilkinson asked an AI generator to imagine how Manchester might look in the future. You can see one of the results below.
The images show the city centre with 100 skyscrapers, if the flowers of Piccadilly Gardens were restored, if Deansgate was pedestrianised and if Piccadilly Station was redeveloped.
On to the news. In today’s newsletter we’re discussing an emerging story about how mould could have contributed to the death of another Greater Manchester resident - this time in private accommodation. We’ll also be hearing from the man who discovered Herman's Hermits and finding the secret meeting place of Manchester’s Pokemon fans. Let’s begin.
'Heavily mould-infested'
My colleague Stephen Topping - who broke the story of Awaab Ishak and investigated living conditions on Rochdale’s Freehold estate - reported from a sad court hearing this week. He reports that another person's death is suspected of being linked to mould at their home - this time at a privately-rented property.
Luke Brooks’ case is being investigated by police and a coroner. An expert has suggested his death, on October 25 last year, was related to conditions at his family's privately-rented property in Oldham - described as 'heavily mould-infested'. It has been stressed that the cause of death is 'provisional' at this stage.
Senior coroner Joanne Kearsley has opened an inquest into the 27-year-old’s death. Ms Kearsley presided over hearings into the case of two-year-old Awaab - who died in 2020 after being exposed to mould at his parent's housing association flat in Rochdale. The scandal surrounding Rochdale Boroughwide Housing followed and sparked the Awaab's Law campaign.
Mr Brooks and his family had been living at the property for eight years prior to his death and his parents had made a number of complaints about its state of 'disrepair', Rochdale Coroners' Court heard. The landlord was not named in court.
A post-mortem examination suggested pneumonia leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome suffered by Mr Brooks was brought on by 'heavily-mould infested accommodation'. A microbiologist is due to inspect the property to check for aspergillus - a type of mould linked to pneumonia.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed an investigation is ongoing.
The inquest heard that police and environmental health officials visited the property in response to the family’s complaints on November 1 and they found ‘a small patch of mould growth above a radiator’. No formal issues were noted at the time, but further police investigation followed.
Paying tribute after the hearing, Mr Brooks' father James described his son as ‘a fantastic lad’ while his mum, Patricia said: “He was our angel, he was the spark in this house. He was the light.”
You can read more about the hearing here.
'We’ve heard it all before'
"We have a long, long, long way to go to bring about the changes our country demands to stamp out this horrific crime,” Maggie Oliver says.
The detective turned whistle-blower and child sexual exploitation campaigner resigned from Greater Manchester Police after claiming the Rochdale victims had been failed by the force.
On Monday she met with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary privately in Rochdale as they launched a new grooming gangs taskforce to root out and jail paedophiles preying on vulnerable youngsters. She said she took with her three survivors of child abuse, from Rochdale, Oldham and Rotherham, and together they discussed the issues.
She later told reporter Paul Britton: “Words are all very well and good, but I want to see some action. I have heard all these words before.
“The survivors shared their experiences with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, telling them how they were monumentally failed. I believe hearing first hand from survivors has a real impact - they weren't conversations the PM and Home Secretary will forget. But we are going into an election period - are these sound bites and PR?
“I very much welcome that this is being tackled head on and finally police forces are going to have to record the ethnicity of abusers. But I said to them at the meeting that words are easy and action is what is needed."
In a post on the Facebook page for her foundation, Maggie said these crimes are a ‘national shame’ that have gone ‘virtually unchecked for decades whilst successive governments have continued to talk the talk’.
Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd meanwhile says the government has been told ‘for years’ to ‘take this seriously’. “The present Home Secretary and her predecessors have been told by me directly to deal properly with anyone involved in grooming young people. So after all this time, let's see some action not just more words,” he says.
A DIY success story
I do like a story about a doer-upper. And Claire Bakan has certainly got a good one. She bought a Victorian house in Tameside in 2019 and soon discovered it needed a lot of work.
She swapped her home in Levenshulme for the four-bed semi in Audenshaw which she bought for £220,000. “As I made money on my house in Levenshulme it enabled me to buy this house without a mortgage,” she says.
As Phoebe Jobling writes, Claire soon came across various problems including a condemned boiler, damp, dodgy electrics and a flooded cellar. “I didn’t expect the house to have this many issues when I bought it,” she says. “When I first moved, I remember sitting on the sofa with my youngest daughter and I just turned to her and started crying and said I felt like I'd made the biggest mistake. But she was like ‘We'll figure it out’.”
Claire was on a tight budget and as such, learned new skills like rendering and plumbing during the Covid lockdowns. “I’d never done anything like this before, I was just learning as I go from YouTube tutorials,” she says.
After three years and around £50,000 she is finally happy with it and says it has been valued at £395,000. “There's a lot of my personality in here but I’d say it's quite a traditional look. I like exploring different things and adding in bits of colour so my kitchen is pink, and my living room has navy blue in it. I ripped it all up and sanded the original floorboards by hand and varnished them all,” she says.
You can watch a video showing a walkthrough of the house here.
Herman's Hermits, Hurricane Higgins, 10CC & me
This piece about Harvey Lisberg - the Mancunian talent manager who discovered Herman's Hermits - is really entertaining.
As chief reporter Neal Keeling writes: “It was at the Hartford Community Centre in Davyhulme in July 1963 that Harvey Lisberg realised he was into something good. He and a friend, Charlie Silverman, had been writing ‘pretty rubbish’ pop songs that no one wanted to record.
“He was about to set up a talent contest through the Manchester Evening News to find a local unknown band who would record them when a friend of a friend mentioned a local group he should check out. As Harvey now recalls: ‘That night in July 1963 changed my life’.”
The band he went to see, Herman and His Hermits, would be his route to a fortune. And over three decades he would go on to manage snooker bad boys Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and Jimmy White, as well as one of Manchester's finest bands, 10cc.
Harvey has been speaking to Neal from his home in Palm Springs, California, after releasing his book I'm Into Something Good. My Life managing 10cc Herman's Hermits and many more.
One of the many anecdotes in the book involves songwriter Graham Gouldman, who Harvey put on retainer for £10 a week. He wrote Heart Full of Soul for The Yardbirds and Bus Stop for The Hollies - which caught the attention of the mafia.
Harvey was asked to attend a meeting while in New York with a music mogul named Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records. Years earlier a hitman had been hired to murder him, but accidentally shot his brother, whom Levy had sent in his place to a meeting. Harvey writes: "He also had some happy little aphorisms, like 'The pen or your brains will be on the table' - in other words, either you sign with me or I'll have you shot.
"While I'm there he says 'you've got this track called Bus Stop, well we'd like to publish that.' I said I'm sorry we've already done a deal with EMI. He then pushed a briefcase across the table and said open it. Inside there was $30.000. It's like Breaking Bad at that moment. He said 'that's yours if we can publish it'. I pushed it back, I knew that's all we would see, and I wasn't going to work with the mafia either.”
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Weather etc
- Thursday: Heavy rain changing to cloudy in the afternoon. 10C.
- Road closures: A662 Pollard Street Westbound, New Islington, closed due to roadworks from Pollard Street to A665 Great Ancoats Street. Until April 13.
- A5186 Langworthy Road Northbound, Salford, closed due to roadworks from A576 Eccles Old Road to Charles Street. Until April 9.
- Trivia question: What was the breakout hit for Stockport band 10cc?
Manchester headlines
Junction: A junction in Bury has been redesigned specifically with cyclists and pedestrians in mind. But locals are torn as to whether or not it actually improves things. The A56 Manchester Road and A58 Jubilee Way near Bury Town Hall have been revamped as a Cycle Optimised Protected Signals junction - with three give way points, six entrances and a mini set of traffic lights for cyclists. The layout - built using part of a £1m public fund - is meant to ‘separate pedestrians and cyclists from motor traffic’. And while most agree it’s a good thing, a number of residents have concerns. Resident Danielle McManus said it’s a good idea but once cyclists are out of the junction ‘they’re back on the main road with the cars anyway’. “It seems to me that people will just continue to use the paths anyway,” she said. More here.
Growing: Domestic abuse is a ‘growing issue’ in Tameside as leaders reveal that incidents have soared in the past year. A meeting of Tameside’s executive cabinet was told that cases of domestic abuse reported to Greater Manchester Police had increased by 22 per cent. The number for 2019/20 stood at 4,424, rising to 5,409 in 2021/22. And the children’s social care department had seen referrals related to domestic abuse soar by 74 per cent, with 1,850 made in 2019/20 and 3,222 last year. In the week to March 31 Greater Manchester Police (GMP) conducted a dedicated week of action against domestic abuse in the region, in which 510 arrests related to domestic abuse had been made by officers. Debbie Watson, the town hall’s director of population health said: “This continues to be a growing issue for us in Tameside.”
Report: Police can take up to 18 months to make an arrest after becoming aware that a child is at risk of online sexual abuse, according to a report. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found that forces’ responses often leaves youngsters vulnerable and allow offenders to escape justice. It said there are often ‘unacceptable delays and missed opportunities’ in responding to allegations and concerns about suspects, and officers have ‘limited tools’ to understand risk. The report does not name individual forces, although it covers policing across England and Wales including GMP. More here.
Closure: Levanter, the much-loved Spanish restaurant in Ramsbottom, is to close. Owners Fiona and Joe Botham broke the news via a short message on the restaurant’s website. “Levanter is now closed,” they said. “Thank you to all our guests who have visited and supported us over the last nine years. We will miss you.” It comes after bosses revealed they had been forced to close their spin-off bar and dining room space on Smithy Street in January - citing the cost of living crisis. More here.
Worth a read
There is a secret underground world of Pokémon in Manchester and Rami Mwamba has been finding out all about it.
Just off Stevenson Square, in the Northern Quarter, there is a deceptively large basement where Pokémon League players gather to battle it out. Here at Fanboy Three, gamers share a space with budding Warhammer players.
Each week players take part in the ‘Pokémonday Pokémon League’ with the Pokémon TCG trading cards. Players can be of any age, from any background and differing skill level.
“Pokémon is really wholesome, Nintendo really hit it out the park,” shop owner David Salisbury tells Rami. “You are assembling your little team of cute animals and then you’re going on an adventure.
“This is something that we call in the industry a ‘nostalgia brand’. When life gets tough, you start remembering when the hardest thing you had to do was go to the corner shop and open a pack of Pokemon and hope you got a Charizard in it.
“We definitely saw a resurgence of that during the pandemic because that generation is now in their thirties and forties and so they had a lot of things going on in their life.”
You can read the full story here.
That's all for today
Thanks for joining me. If you have stories you would like us to look into, email beth.abbit@menmedia.co.uk.
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The answer to today's trivia question is: I'm Not in Love, which was released in 1975 and topped the UK Singles Chart for two weeks.
