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Here is today's Mancunian Way:
by BETH ABBIT - Wed July 27, 2022
Hello and welcome,
I know Marcus Rashford is a fast player, but I wonder if he can outrun Billy Whizz - widely accepted as the fastest boy in the world. Perhaps we'll soon find out as the Manchester United star has guest-edited a special edition of the Beano.
We'll be discussing that story, the situation in our hospitals and the latest on the Oldham mill investigation in today's newsletter.
Green shoots
It’s been just over a year since Stephen Watson took over as Chief Constable at Greater Manchester Police. He says a lot has changed since then, as he works to pull the force out of special measures.
Almost all of the senior leadership team has been replaced with ten new chief superintendents in charge of each district. Meanwhile, the time it takes to answer the most serious 999 calls has been halved to a 29 second average last month, compared to 66 seconds in June 2021, following major investment.
Response times to the most serious ‘grade 1’ calls have been slashed to an average of ten minutes and 12 seconds. And arrests have almost doubled to 4,527 in May this year compared to 2,881 in May 2021, prompting GMP to re-open its custody suite in Bolton. It plans to do the same at Longsight police station. Meanwhile force bosses say they are now 94 percent 'compliant' with government crime figure requirements after problems with the iOPS computer system.
Chief Constable Watson has been talking to crime reporter John Scheerhout about the changes and spoke of 'green shoots' of recovery. He also repeated a promise to step aside if he failed to get GMP out of special measures.
"These figures are genuinely dramatic and really impressive,” he said. “In describing the delivery of our plan, I don't think frankly the public are interested in some sort of high-flown rhetoric about our strategic intent or anything of the sort.
"I think what the public are interested in is the core basics of policing, picking up the telephone, making accurate records, getting to them more quickly, investigating crimes that are important to us, bringing people to justice, looking after our victims, and working in such a way that the public can see visibly what it is we are doing to be satisfied their perfectly legitimate requirements are met."
Second victim
Further human remains, indicating a second victim, have been found at Bismark House Mill, in Oldham. Specialist officers are still searching the site after demolition workers found remains on Saturday - two months after a huge fire tore through the building. They have now recovered remains to suggest ‘at least two people were in the mill during the fire’.
Greater Manchester Police was contacted 'via Vietnam' last Thursday - two days before the sad discovery at the mill - with a report that four Vietnamese nationals were missing and may have been involved in a fire.
The Major Incident Team is working with partner agencies to ensure potential family members in Vietnam are fully informed and supported. It’s thought the fire-ravaged mill was being used as a suspected cannabis farm.
The Vietnamese Embassy in the UK is working with police to help identify the human remains. The Deputy Ambassador of Vietnam in the UK, named as Tô Minh Thu by the Viet Nam News Agency, was pictured at the investigation site speaking to crews from Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. Formal identification is not believed to have taken place.
At the time of the blaze, on May 7, it was believed nobody was inside the mill. Firefighters spent four days at the site but no search of the premises was carried out. Leon Parkes, Assistant Chief Fire Officer, said the decision was made due to the severity of the fire, and there being no information to indicate there were people inside.
Greater Manchester Police has referred itself to the force's internal Professional Standards Branch due to ‘previous contact relating to the fire and missing persons’. GMFRS says an independent review of their response to the fire will be carried out.
Weather, etc.
- Thursday: Cloudy. 20C.
- Roads closed: Delph New Road, Dobcross, in both directions for roadworks between Wall Hill Road and Oldham Road until August 5.
- Trams: No service on Metrolink between Eccles and MediaCityUK due to engineering works until October 21.
- On the buses: Arriva services suspended due to strike action
- Today's Manc trivia question: Where did Marcus Rashford go to school?
Answer at the bottom of the newsletter
Hospitals bracing for winter
Hospital bosses are in crisis talks as they prepare for winter chaos across the region’s hospitals. One hospital trust chief said Greater Manchester’s major hospitals could see ‘the highest number of patients in A&E ever’.
The Northern Care Alliance is collecting data about harm patients are coming to after 12-hour waits in A&E and they say the numbers are ‘going in the wrong direction’, as Helena Vesty reports.
Efforts to improve the flow through emergency departments are being hampered by the number of patients who are medically fit to go home, yet cannot be discharged thanks to problems in the social care sector. “It’s a concern across every single organisation in the Greater Manchester system,” NCA chief delivery officer Judith Adams has said.
Interim chair, Chris Mayer, said improvements must be made ‘if we’re to stand any chance of getting through winter in a reasonable way’. Especially as ‘we could see greater numbers of patients in A&E than we’ve ever seen before’.
Blam!
Marcus Rashford is appearing in a special edition of the Beano after guest-editing the comic. The Manchester United star makes several appearances, drawn alongside popular characters including the Bash Street Kids, Billy Whizz and Bananaman.
In his editor’s letter, he urged children to ‘build a team of allies to have fun with and speak up for what’s important’. “Asking for help is no weakness. Asking for help to achieve things quicker is a superpower,” he writes.
For every copy of the special Beano sold, 20p will be donated to the Marcus Rashford Book Club to help children access books, in partnership with Macmillan Children’s Books.
Manchester headlines
Three seriously injured: Three children have suffered serious burns following a fire at the derelict former Woodman pub in Hazel Grove, Stockport, on Tuesday night. The children - said to be aged between 12 and 13 - were rescued by firefighters. Police have described their condition as 'critical' and sat they believe the fire was started 'deliberately'.
Reconsider: Grant Shapps' rail plan for the North does not deliver on the ‘promises made’ to the region at the 2019 election or the ‘stated aims’ of the levelling up agenda, the Transport Select Committee has said. A report said the plan should be ‘reconsidered’ to avoid a ‘missed opportunity’. The Transport Secretary previously said the £96 billion Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) would slash journey times across the North with 110 miles of new high-speed line. But closer inspection revealed the requested investment by northern leaders had roughly been cut in half with much of the cash going towards upgrades of existing routes.
Eurovision: Sacha Lord says Manchester has already proven itself capable of hosting Eurovision in 2023. The region’s night-time economy adviser and Parklife co-founder says the city’s rich musical history with bands such as New Order and Happy Mondays would mean it had a ‘strong bid’. “Only a few weeks ago, we saw that the infrastructure of the city centre can absolutely cope,” he said. “Speaking on a personal level, when my festival Parklife was on back in June we had 80,000 people there, we had about 50,000 people at The Killers… It absolutely works."
Iconic venue
The Hulme Hippodrome has stood empty for decades. A Grade II listed building, it opened in 1901 and hosted all kinds of acts including The Beatles, Laurel and Hardy, and Nina Simone. It went on to be used as a bingo hall in 1962 until its closure in 1986.
Worth a read
Luis Sanjuan doesn’t do small portions. Originally from Barranquilla, in the north of Colombia, he now runs Cafe Sanjaun, in Stockport.
Ben Arnold - who tucked into an enormous stuffed tortilla while chatting to Luis - has been learning all about his eatery. While there he met a regular who even admitted: “I had a dream last night about that pulled chicken.”
That's all for today
Thanks for joining me, the next edition of the Mancunian Way will be with you around the same time tomorrow. If you have any stories you would like us to feature or look into, please contact me at beth.abbit@menmedia.co.uk
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The answer to today’s trivia question, where did Marcus Rashford go to school, is Ashton-on-Mersey School.
