Keep up to date with all the big stories from across Greater Manchester in the daily Mancunian Way newsletter. You can receive the newsletter direct to your inbox every weekday by signing up right here.
Here's the Mancunian Way for today:
Hello,
"Sometimes we make no sales in a day. It's not good for business. Everyone that comes in says it's a beautiful shop and we are lucky to have a florist but people here have low budgets.”
Ahmad Alaswad was optimistic when he opened The Flower Place on busy Moston Lane - but he has found trading is not exactly what he expected. "When I tell my friends I'm based in Moston Lane, they say it's not a good area. We've been here a year and have tried to do a lot of social media but it's not had much impact,” he says, speaking to reporter Tom George from inside his lovely shop in the north Manchester suburb.
As Tom reports in this feature, running a business on the road nicknamed ‘alcohol alley’ is not always easy.
Mr Alaswad previously ran a florist's in Dubai and was attracted to this part of Manchester by the reasonable rent and lack of competition. But in the year since he opened, he’s struggled with shoplifters.
"There are no walking areas and nothing nice to see here," he adds. "If you go to Didsbury village, you see a lot of people walking and there are a lot of restaurants, coffee shops and ice cream shops. Maybe they can do that here to attract people."
Locals have been promised revamps in Moston before and been disappointed when they haven't come to fruition. But Manchester council has promised to regenerate the area with a new public square and improved green spaces. They hope locals will spend more time in the centre of Moston by making it a 'greener, more attractive and sustainable destination'. The plan is to tackle heavy traffic and bad parking and encourage sustainable travel with 'improved and safer streets'.
One of those keen for change is Donna Carlin, owner of Stax hairdressers, who says a regeneration would be ‘the best thing ever’. Over the years, she has come to the aid of mugged residents and reports regular sightings of police in the area.
"We've had machete attacks and knife crime. People call it 'Muggers Lane' now. They can make down there really nice but nothing is going to stop people vandalising it,” she says.
However Mike Willner says Moston’s reputation is worse than the reality. "I think the perception of the crime rate is exaggerated. You get gangs fighting in Chorlton and other areas too. It's not just here,” he says from his shop, Moston Lane Appliances.
But the trader agrees that regeneration is 'long overdue' and he hopes it will improve the appearance of the high street and 'tap into the diversity of the area'.
"It's not viable to leave a high street to market forces because they will decline. They need to attract new businesses and incentivise them and help them understand that Moston Lane can be a very busy high street again. It needs more social amenities like cafes and restaurants and more variety of people during the day,” he says.
You can read Tom’s full piece on Moston here.
‘That's just 'angin’
Rainy days on Irlam’s Marlborough Road have a rather disgusting side effect.
Neighbours say tampons, baby wipes and used toilet paper were left strewn across the street after downpours led to a 'flow of faeces' during last month's storms.
"We had sanitary towels floating about. That's just 'angin,” says Vasoulla Davies, who lives on the street with her young family.
John Roberts echoes that opinion, claiming "You couldn't come down here without a facemask” after heavy rain last month.
While Ben Southern - who spent thousands doing up his home recently - says his new driveway was left covered in faeces and tampons. "Coming home to see your driveway is a swimming pool of s*** isn't really that great," he told reporter Stephen Topping.
Salford Council thinks the problem stems from a sewage pipe where United Utilities says there had been a blockage. The water company insists it will inspect the sewer.
Periods of extremely dry weather put Greater Manchester’s water supplies under increasing pressure - and storms can see water levels rise rapidly, causing a flood risk.
In 2021, local leaders signed a Memorandum of Understanding and have now joined forces with the Environment Agency and United Utilities to look at ways to manage water differently across the city region.
The Integrated Water Management Plan aims to better prepare the region for climate change.
Councillor Tom Ross, the region’s lead on green matters, says local authorities face an uphill struggle when it comes to managing drainage under quickly changing conditions.
“We know that short-term solutions, tinkering at the edges or crossing our fingers and hoping for someone else to solve the problem, or waiting for it to go away, won’t solve the fundamental challenge of managing water differently,” he says.
MORE power
Academics claim Andy Burnham needs more extensive powers in order to bring about substantial change in Greater Manchester.
A study into the impact of Mr Burnham’s efforts - and those of his Liverpool counterpart Steve Rotheram - since 2017 found the the decision to proceed to a metro mayor model was right.
The University of Huddersfield academics agree with the decision to give Mr Burnham a single budget but say transport - via the Bee Network - is ‘the only really hard power’ both mayors have.
"The question that we started with was is this going to be a permanent change in English governance, a real kind of constitutional revolution or is it going to be a flash in the pan?", says co-author Professor Blakeley.
"We conclude in the book that whilst the powers that the metro mayors have are limited and they have insufficient resources, it was absolutely the right thing to do to seize that opportunity within the context of an extremely centralised political system.”
‘I’m not going to let this one go’
Determined to win the fight over drug testing at festivals, Parklife boss Sacha Lord has threatened the Home Office with legal action.
He and the Night Time Industries Association are demanding a judicial review over whether so-called ‘back of house’ drug testing should be required to have a Controlled Drugs Licence. They have given the government seven days to respond, reports Ben Arnold.
It comes after Parklife bosses were told they would need a licence to test drugs - just 48 hours before this year’s event. As a result, staff from The Loop were unable to test on site in June.
Lord previously said Home Secretary Suella Braverman could have ‘blood on her hands’ as a result of the enforcement and promised: “I’m not going to let this one go.”
The Home Office says a licence has always been needed to test drugs, and that it has not changed its policy.
A knock-on effect
When thousands of fish washed up dead in Salford Quays last month, onlookers were shocked. The Environment Agency concluded that low oxygen levels caused by a combination of thunderstorms and high temperatures were to blame.
Now experts say the UK could see more fish deaths than ever before if temperatures continue to rise. With June recorded by the Met Office as the hottest on record, the Canal and River Trust say reports of more than 60 'fish mortality incidents' on 21 different canals up and down the UK have been recorded.
Mark Owen, head of fisheries at Angling Trust, warns the hot weather has already killed thousands of fish across the country. "If July is like June, if August is like June, then we will get far more fish kills than we've ever seen. There is a knock-on effect. The fish are the visible bit because that's what people see floating on the surface but it is also about what is happening to the ecosystem,” he says.
Read Paul Britton’s latest report here.
'Call me'
Yesterday I told you about the bold handwritten note which read: ‘HEY FIT BUS DRIVER CALL ME’ which was found attached to a bus stop in Whitefield.
Though the identity of the intended target remains a mystery, the author has now come forward.
Donna Suter says she posted the note after clocking the attractive driver of a 531 bus sailing past her on Radcliffe New Road on Sunday afternoon. Her pal Ryan Mendelson tried chasing the bus down the road - to no avail. So the pair decided to leave a note.
Donna is sure the bus driver in question will know it's meant for him. "He must know because when he passed I was smiling at him," she says. "I did the hand gesture for 'call me', he must know it was me."
Fair enough - but you’d have to be quite a confident individual to admit you think you’re the intended target, wouldn’t you?
Sign up to The Mancunian Way
Has a friend forwarded you this edition of The Mancunian Way? You can sign up to receive the latest email newsletter direct to your inbox every weekday by clicking on this link.
Weather etc
Wednesday: Cloudy changing to light rain by late morning. 19C.
Road closures: M67 Eastbound entry slip road closed due to long-term roadworks at J2 A57 Hyde Road (Denton). Until December 1, 2025.
Trivia question: Where is Elizabeth Gaskell House?
Manchester headlines
Buses: The first yellow buses set to be rolled out completely across two boroughs later this year have been spotted on the famous Leigh guided busway. The 'Bee Network' is set to be rolled out initially in Wigan and Bolton from September 24 with a new fleet of electric yellow buses. Operators have already started to introduce Bee Network co-branded yellow buses onto the network, replacing the distinctive purple buses that run from Leigh and Atherton to Manchester Royal Infirmary.
- Selected: Labour has selected its parliamentary candidate for Bolton West and Atherton for the next general election. Phil Brickell, a former NHS worker who is currently a councillor on Manchester City Council, will be hoping to win the seat currently held by Chris Green MP, a Conservative who won in 2015. The constituency is currently the safest Conservative seat in Greater Manchester with Mr Green upping his majority to 8,855 at the last national poll in December 2019. Coun Brickell currently represents the ward of Baguley in Wythenshawe. He said it was ‘an honour’ to be selected.
Junction: Proposals for a new industrial park will be the latest step forward in a masterplan for Oldham which aims to create more than 700 jobs. A developer has submitted plans to Oldham council for the next phase of the £40m Hollinwood Junction project, which is being delivered in partnership with the authority. Langtree is aiming to build 13 industrial units on a site next to Junction 22 of the M60 motorway to the south-west of Oldham town centre. More here.
Counterfeit: More than 500 tonnes of counterfeit goods have been seized by police from shipping containers at a storage unit in Cheetham Hill. It’s been described as a 'record haul in UK history'. Greater Manchester Police said the mammoth seizure - collectively worth an estimated £87m - was also the largest single seizure in Europe in almost two decades. Teams of officers spent 14 days breaking into 206 shipping containers from the unit, which was said by the force to be 'tucked away on the outskirts of Cheetham Hill'. In total, 580 tonnes of counterfeit items were found - including 'monumental quantities' of counterfeit clothes, drugs, illicit tobacco, Nitrous Oxide canisters and counterfeit vapes. More here.
Worth a read
At 7.45pm on the Wednesday Ben Arnold visited Bar San Juan, on Chorlton’s Beech Road, every table was taken. That’s quite the feat given so few places are packed like that on weekdays nowadays. But as Ben writes here, ‘people know this place is good’.
“A couple of weeks back, it was named the best reviewed restaurant in Manchester. Not voted for by hoity toity food types, but by its customers. Ask anyone local and they’ll agree with you, and it’s not wildly surprising either.”
As our enthusiastic reviewer writes, plenty of places ‘do tapas’, and even more places do small plates but Bar San Juan ‘does it properly, not elevated or smartened up, but knocked out at rapid pace in a busy, hectic bar, as it should be’.
“Here you can spend an hour or so in Spain for the cost of a few plates and a beer.”
You can read the full review 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.
If you have enjoyed this newsletter today, why not tell a friend how to sign up?
The answer to today's trivia question is: Plymouth Grove, Ardwick.
