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 and welcome,
I hope you’re all well and managing as it really starts to feel more like winter. I’m back after a lovely week off, so thank you to Damon Wilkinson and Tom Molloy for taking over newsletter duties in my absence.
We’ll start the week with a story about the concerns over gambling shops that are cropping up in deprived areas. I’ll also be telling you about a new Manchester Evening News campaign and we’ll be taking a look at a piece of Coronation Street history. Let’s begin.
A never-closed browser tab
Army veterans are ten times more likely to experience a gambling addiction, while people in deprived communities are seven times more likely. That’s according to numbers presented to Manchester Council's health and wellbeing board earlier this month.
They have raised concerns, in a Gambling Related Harms report, about the number of bookies in deprived areas of the city as the cost of living crisis bites.
Dr Murugesan Raja told the board he has seen an increase in patients presenting with gambling related issues connected to their mental health at his GP practice.
A total of 599 people were referred to the NHS’s specialist gambling clinics between April and September this year. That’s compared to 421 people in the same period last year, according to Reach data unit’s David Dubas-Fisher.
That means we’re on course for a record number of referrals by the end of this financial year. Between April 2020 and March 2021, there were 775 such referrals. That rose to 1,013 in the 12 months to March 2022.
Online gambling is also said to be causing a surge in suicidal young men turning to A&E, with a 42 per cent annual rise in demand for NHS gambling clinics. And the NHS has had to open another two facilities in England to cope.
Matt Gaskell, clinical lead and consultant psychologist for the NHS Northern Gambling Service, says the clinics are full of ’young men in football shirts’ who have fallen foul of ‘predatory tactics’ by betting firms.
He told The Times: “People start gambling as soon as they wake up in the morning; they’re gambling in the shower, gambling while they’re driving to work. The NHS is picking up the tab.”
Earlier this month, the Guardian’s Hannah Jane Parkinson wrote a moving and eye-opening piece about losing £40,000 by betting on tennis.
“Along with many people, I still imagined gambling as the preserve of bored middle-aged men in rundown high-street shops; Ladbrokes and William Hills nestled among kebab joints and pawn shops. Stubby pencils, receipts littering floors, rising voices as dogs with prominent ribs raced around a track on a TV screen. Often, that’s not the way it is any more. Nowadays you can bankrupt yourself via an app on a mobile phone, or a never-closed browser tab,” she writes.
The economic burden of gambling in Manchester is estimated at £15.3m in 2022 due to links with issues including homelessness, depression and alcohol dependency.
The council has opened a Gambling Treatment Clinic in the city centre and is promoting services for those struggling.
But board chairman Coun Thomas Robinson said it is ‘distressing’ to see gambling premises ‘overlap’ with areas of deprivation.
Local democracy reporter George Lythgoe has been out and about in Wigan town centre - where there are eight betting shops - to talk to people about gambling.
Shopper Janet Hughes told George she believes it is ‘really dangerous’ to have so many bookies in the area. “It is worrying, especially with it being online now as well. It is a worry, plenty of people bet their wages,” she said.
While one mum, whose son was plunged into debt by free online bets, says she was shocked when she found out the scale of his problem. “It was the free bets that got him into it,” she said. “One of his friends actually owed about £20,000. It’s all very scary. I think a lot of people took it up during lockdown and got hooked.”
Gambling firms had a gross gambling yield of £14.08bn last year - that’s the money they are left with after paying punters their winnings. The figure is up 11 per cent on the previous year though still below pre pandemic levels, new figures from the Gambling Commission have revealed.
For the third year in a row, the lion’s share of the GGY came from online (or remote) gambling - £6.44 billion versus £3.49 billion.
The Betting and Gaming Council says betting shops in the UK support thousands of jobs and contribute billions in tax and business rates. They say members committed an additional £100m for the treatment of problem gambling between 2019 and 2023.
When the lights go out
National Grid was considering paying households across Britain to reduce their energy use to help out on Tuesday evening.
The Electricity System Operator said it was contemplating whether to activate the first ever live run of its Demand Flexibility Service – which is designed to avoid blackouts - but has since decided against it.
The DFS works by asking households to reduce the amount of electricity they use at certain times – and promises to pay them for any reductions they make.
The scheme was launched earlier this month and has already been tested twice but has not yet run live.
Helping the hungry this Christmas
Lewey Hellewell says he felt shame and desperation when he was made redundant from his job in hospitality and had to turn to a food bank.
That experience led him to change things for other people who need help with the basics and as such, Humans MCR was born.
The Blackley-based charity works with families and individuals in need across Manchester, Salford, Rochdale, Trafford, and Stockport - aiming to give 'respect, health, dignity and hope to those in our communities' while providing emergency food parcels and a community grocers.
"I think the worst part for me was access, so only being able to use a food bank three times a year. And each time you use it, you get three days worth of food. I just found that totally unbelievable, that if you were really struggling that you could use one food bank to get nine days worth of food support over the course of a year,” Lewey told reporter Nicole Wootton-Cane.
This Christmas, the Manchester Evening News is working with Humans MCR to make sure families don't go hungry.
The charity is expecting to deliver festive 'Xmas hampers' to 300 families in our region on December 23, giving clients everything they need to make a full Christmas dinner , as well as presents for children, and treats for adults.
Their vital work means hundreds in our region will be able to enjoy a real Christmas dinner, instead of suffering in silence.
You can donate to the campaign here.
No more 'virtue signalling'
Stephen Watson says Greater Manchester Police officers must cease ‘virtue-signalling’ on social media and get on with the job they are paid to do.
The chief constable was shipped in to replace Ian Hopkins last year and has since brought the force out of special measures.
He told The Times: “Using social media, in these very contested times, requires a particular skill. And it’s a skill that we do not have. So for the most part, regardless of our intentions, we tend to use social media badly.
“And actually, reaching out to communities is all too often perceived as virtue signalling. And, candidly, in some cases it is virtue signalling.”
The chief constable said he had looked at officers’ social media and thought they should ‘get on with being the police because that’s what you are paid for’.
He said: “The public genuinely don’t care what I have for breakfast, or what my opinions are on contemporary social issues.”
He added: “I think that we are better served by dishing up to the public the things that they have every right to expect of us. And to just do that constantly, consistently, and to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.”
Weather etc
- Tuesday: Overcast. 8C.
- Trains: Special timetable operating on Transpennine Express due to shortage of train crews. Passengers are advised to check their journey before travelling.
- Trams: Revised service on Manchester Metrolink due to over running engineering works at Piccadilly Gardens. Some Metrolink services are operating with changes until the end of November when the works can be finished.
- Trivia question: Who plays Rita Tanner nee Littlewood, Bates, Faiclough and Sullivan, in the soap opera Coronation Street?
Manchester headlines
Tributes: Tributes have been paid to a company director dad who was killed in an horrific gun-and-acid attack near his village home. Liam Smith, a 38-year-old father of two, was shot in Shevington, Wigan, on Thursday night. He also had acid thrown on him, police have confirmed, with a murder investigation underway. Shocked friends have paid tribute to Mr Smith, an electrician and former soldier.
Shed: Residents have slammed plans to place a 'huge' 20ft shipping container in a south Manchester park. The shed at Beech Road Park, Chorlton, will store tools and equipment and will be used by rangers, volunteers and associated groups. But neighbours believe its size will 'ruin' the beauty spot. One local, Mr Bimal, says the size and the cost ‘aren't justified for storing a few gardening tools’. More here.
Petition: A whole foods shop at Saint Mary’s Hospital has been ‘asked to leave’ by facility management, according to owner. Medics have launched a petition to stop the closure of Have A Banana. The hospital trust and Sodexo have invited the shop to create a proposal on why it should stay, the M.E.N understands. More here.
Meet and greet: A ‘rogue’ meet and greet car park near Manchester Airport has been shut down after a police crackdown. Two sites in Styal were targeted in an operation this summer after a wave of complaints. Holidaymakers had often found the firms through online comparison sites, giving the impression that they are booking with professional, secure airport parking linked to the airport, Cheshire Police say. More here.
A piece of Corrie history
A remarkable 27 mllion people tuned in to watch Coronation Street when villain Alan Bradley was killed by a Blackpool tram.
The 1989 episode showed Alan chasing his long-suffering partner Rita Fairclough into the path of the tram on the prom, only to be hit and killed himself.
Now, Blackpool's Tramtown Museum needs to raise £2,500 by end of the year to rescue the double decker vehicle - known as tram number 710. It's owned by the Fleetwood Heritage Leisure Trust and currently based on land at Fleetwood Docks.
Trustees have just 30 days to save it from eviction and relocate it to Tramtown, where it would become a static exhibit, as local democracy reporter Shelagh Parkinson reports.
"We know it will be popular as 'where is the tram that killed Alan Bradley?' is the most popular question we get asked by visitors to Tramtown,” lead volunteer coordinator Coun Paul Galley says.
Worth a read
A sex worker in Manchester says a hot drink - handed to her by a local charity - may have saved her life. In fact, she says it stopped her from being raped.
"I was able to throw it in my attacker's face and flee. That night MASH may have saved my life," she says.
The incredible work of charity MASH (Manchester Action on Street Health) is highlighted in this piece by Sophie Halle-Richards.
It comes as women are increasingly reporting that they've been victims of sexual violence including rape, physical assaults and robberies. The charity has helped 54 women with support around violence in the last three months alone.
From tomorrow, you can donate to MASH’s Christmas appeal which is raising money for the the outreach van charity workers use to reach women who sex work.
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: Barbara Knox.
