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Here's the Mancunian Way for today:
Happy new year,
It’s officially the first day back to work after the Christmas break. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves and feel well rested.
There will, of course, be plenty of challenges over the coming year. But there’s also plenty to look forward to including the reopening of Manchester Museum and the Eurovision Song Contest here in the North West.
We’re already past the longest day and the evenings are getting lighter all the time. It won’t be long before the Spring bulbs awaken and blooms of colour fill the garden. Whatever your plans and resolutions for the new year, let’s keep looking forward.
In today’s newsletter we’ll be discussing the rail strikes and a very unusual charity challenge by a self-confessed kebab addict. But first, let’s take a look at the situation within the NHS.
A sense of jeopardy
A new Covid variant, flu on the rise and the return of facemasks - it’s not the best start to 2023 but sadly the problems of last year don’t just disappear with the changing of a calendar.
Today, NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor urged the Government to reopen talks with unions over pay, saying the ‘last thing’ the NHS needs is four days of strikes in January. He said the current situation in the health service is ‘very difficult’ as it grapples with too few staff and high demand exacerbated by flu and Covid.
He told BBC Breakfast: “The simple reality here is that the health service is caught between the fact that it has limited capacity, particularly when it comes to workforce – 130,000 vacancies – and a level of demand that it is difficult to meet in ordinary times. When you add in flu and Covid, which doesn’t just affect patients but also means many staff are off ill, that’s when you get to this very difficult situation we’re in.”
Ambulance staff are set to walk out on January 11 and 23 in a dispute over pay, while nursing staff will strike for two consecutive days on January 18 and 19.
In recent days, patients have faced long waits for treatment, ambulances have been delayed and thousands of beds have been taken up with medically-fit people who should not be there.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has repeated its claim that somewhere between 300 and 500 people are dying each week as a result of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care. President Dr Adrian Boyle told Times Radio on New Year's Day that long waiting times were being linked with hundreds of unnecessary deaths.
Chris Hopson, chief strategy officer at NHS England, has said the health service does not ‘recognise these numbers’.
Health professionals in Greater Manchester say the region is being hit by a double whammy of covid and flu cases - leading to intense demand on the system.
A local GP told the Manchester Evening News hospitals are ‘extremely busy’ and struggling for beds. "Flu and Covid is increasing and that's infecting the staff as well, along with patients so that's a double whammy. It's not to the scale of the pandemic yet but it's having an effect."
Meanwhile, it's feared a new Coronavirus strain could pile more pressure on the NHS. Four per cent of cases in the week to December 17 were caused by the new XBB.1.5. strain according to the Sanger Institute. Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, told MailOnline the new mutated variant is is driving increased hospital admissions in New York and should be a ‘sharp reminder’ not to be complacent about Covid. “The threat of XBB.1.5 and other Covid variants further exacerbating the current NHS crisis stresses the need for us to remain vigilant,” he said.
Parents have been urged to keep poorly children off school by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) over concerns there could be a further rise in winter illnesses. The Agency is also asking people to wear face masks and stay at home if they feel unwell as hospitals battle soaring rates of Covid, flu and Strep A.
British Medical Association chairman, Professor Phil Banfield, says the current situation in the NHS is ‘intolerable and unsustainable’ and said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is ‘disingenuous’ to talk about ‘backing the NHS’ in his New Year message when ‘his own Health Secretary is failing to discuss how this crisis can be fixed’.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has accused the Conservatives of 'mismanagement' and said Labour has ‘given up hope’ that they are going to deal with the issue. He told Radio 4’s PM programme people ‘no longer feel confident’ emergency care will be there when they need it and there’s a ‘sense of jeopardy which is frightening so many people across the country’.
To the bitter end
Freddie McCann was probably the youngest person at the Manchester Piccadilly picket this morning - but he certainly made an impression.
The six-year-old was there with his mum Claudia, a ‘huge activist’ who plans to see the RMT strike through to ‘the bitter end’. "I'll take as many pay cuts, as many days unpaid, whatever,” she told reporter Stephen Topping from the picket line. "It's a short-term loss for a long-term gain, big time. At the end of the day, I need a regular income. Keeping my job past 2024 would be nice, basically."
Around a fifth of rail services were expected to run nationwide today as the latest 48-hour walkout began for members of the RMT rail workers' union, before another strike on Friday and Saturday.
They have three demands - a 'reasonable' pay rise in the face of a cost of living crisis, job security, and 'no detrimental changes' to their terms and conditions. Before Christmas, the union voted to reject an offer from Network Rail of a 5 per cent pay rise followed by a 4 per cent increase in the following year. They say it would have led to thousands of job losses, a 50 per cent cut in scheduled maintenance tasks and a 30 per cent increase in unsocial hours.
Transport secretary Mark Harper has urged the RMT to get 'round the negotiating table' to try and ‘hammer out a deal’.
'They feed my soul'
I’m sure many of us will be embarking on a period of healthy eating after Christmas, not least Des Breakey, who has just eaten 124 kebabs in 31 days.
The dad, 36, went without a roast dinner over Christmas to make space for the 250,000 calories contained in the meat, bread and salad he ate during his month-long ‘Kebabathon’. So far he's raised more than £1,000 for Francis House Children’s Hospice.
“I have enjoyed it, but it’s hurt me physically. I’ve felt like crap. I’m not getting any fruit, no vegetables, and no nutrition. I couldn’t eat anything else," he says. “It was a breeze for the first two weeks. But the last two weeks it got a bit messy, not just physically but psychologically as well.”
It’s not the first time Des has taken on a kebabathon in the name of charity. Back in 2020 he ate two a day, for a month, to raise money for Nerve Tumours UK. When I spoke to Des at the time he admitted: “I will never get sick of kebabs. They feed my soul.”
He now plans to retire from extreme eating challenges, but says he will never give up the meaty treats.
Tinged with sadness
He’s raised more than £500,000 and spent years supporting young people who have suffered loss due to violent crime. Now Bryn Hughes has been awarded an MBE for his work and he says his daughter Nicola would be proud of him.
It’s been the loss of Nicola, at the hands of police killer Dale Cregan, that inspired Bryn to set up a memorial fund in her name - with the money helping more than 50 families left devastated by murder.
As John Scheerhout reports, the charity pays for practical help like computers for children who frequently fall behind with their studies in such tragic circumstances and, where they want it, Bryn offers them advice on how to cope.
In April, Bryn launched a campaign for a posthumous Elizabeth Medal for all emergency service workers who are killed on duty.
Bryn says the MBE is a 'poignant' way to mark the 10th anniversary of Nicola’s murder.
“I suppose it’s tinged with that bit of sadness as well because the only reason I’ve been nominated and been given the award was because of what happened to Nicola and the work I’ve done since then," he says.
“I think she would be proud. She would be very proud. But I think she’d be laughing. I think she’d buy me some PJs with a medal on it or something as well. She shared my sense of humour so she’d make some fun of it.”
Nicola was just 23 when she was killed in 2012 alongside fellow PC Fiona Bone, 32, in a gun and grenade ambush while on duty near Hattersley. The pair were killed by fugitive Cregan, who is serving life in prison.
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Weather etc
- Wednesday: Light rain changing to cloudy by late morning. 11C.
- Trains: Only one train per hour runs 8.30am to 4.30pm on Avanti West Coast between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly due to strike action until January 7. Services only running on Transpennine Express between Manchester Piccadilly and York and between Preston and Manchester Airport due to strike action on January 3 and 4. No service on Northern, East Midlands Railway and Transpennine Express between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Oxford Road due to engineering works. Piccadilly platforms 13 or 14 are closed. Some buses run to replace rail services that run short of their final destination until February 2.
- Trivia question: When did Grand Central, in Stockport, first open as a retail, entertainment and leisure complex?
Manchester headlines
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Battle: Litter including hundreds of plastic bottles, muddy footballs and large discarded containers have washed up in a Salford Quays canal. Pictures show the stretch of water brimming with rubbish on Monday - just a day after fancy dress swimmers braved freezing water for a New Year's Day charity event. Leaders at Salford Council have previously explained that the rubbish could be a result of higher rainfall washing debris into the quays from other parts of the region. Councillor David Lancaster, of Salford City Council, said five rivers drain into the Quays. "Unfortunately, it’s an on-going battle with Mother Nature,” he said.
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Phone: A Canadian tourist has tracked his stolen phone to a Salford tower block - but police have warned him not to enter. Behbood Hussain lost his Samsung S22 Ultra in a black case on December 27 and found it through an app. But Greater Manchester Police have told him not to go into the tower block for the phone, which contains pictures of his late grandmother. More here.
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Market: Wigan will have ‘its very own Altrincham Market’ now plans for a new food hall within a historic mill have been given the go ahead. Eckersley Mill will feature a series of individual stalls and a bar on the ground floor with an outdoor terrace that can host around 350 people. Likened to Mackie Mayor, in Manchester, by developers Heaton Group, this food hall, estimated to be 22,000 sq ft in size, will sit below office space on the first, second and third floors above. The plans for the Swan Meadow Road site are only in relation to Mill 1 - which is currently occupied by a gym and fitness club, wrestling club, play centre, self storage and non-food store. More here.
Grand Central
I don’t think there can be anyone in south Manchester who didn’t spend at least some of their teenage years gadding about Grand Central.
The old MGM cinema in particular was a magnet for most young people who spent time at the Stockport leisure hub in the 90s. Nostalgia writer Jess Molyneux has been looking back at the popular cinema, which was demolished back in 2018.
Worth a read
Benjamin Onalaja's path to success has not been an easy one, but he is determined to make ‘something good’ for himself and his family. And so Soul & Surf was born.
The small restaurant on Great Ancoats Street sells a fusion of West African and soul food from America’s deep south.
What’s On editor Jenna Campbell has been speaking to Benjamin about his past and future and the experiences that inspire his delicious food. Read the piece 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: 1991.
