At least £1 billion in public spending was cut from the “city region” of Greater Manchester and Warrington over the last year, according to University of Manchester researchers. The study, carried out for Radio 4, anticipates a total of £10 billion to be slashed from the area over the next four years as part of the government’s austerity drive.

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A new report from the Manchester Business School’s Fairness at Work research programme sheds some light on the way employers in the North West have been responding to the recession. Read on to discover what’s happening to our workplaces…

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Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership (GMLEP) is set to receive £24.7m from the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) as part of a £500m ‘Growing Places Fund’ package launched this week by Secretary of State Eric Pickles. In a seeming hark back to the policies of the dying Labour government, the scheme is designed to “get Britain building again” and kickstart stalled housing and infrastructure projects across the country.

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Electricians from across the North West this week again took part in the latest nationally coordinated protests against plans by employers to reduce pay and worsen working conditions. For the second week in a row the building site for the new Carrington Paper Mill, operated by the construction firm Balfour Beatty, was picketed by around 50 workers, with many of those employed on site choosing to turn away rather than cross the picket line. Similar actions have taken place in Newcastle, Glasgow and London over the past fortnight.

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Last week’s announcement that over 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas could have been discovered deep beneath Lancashire’s Flyde coast sparked giddy expectations of a “gold rush” in the Ribble estuary. But will the find make Blackpool the new Dallas, or is it hot air from an energy company trying to overwhelm opposition to the arrival of ‘fracking’ in the UK? Lisa Ansell reports.

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In the words of the city’s tourist board Marketing Manchester, today’s “I Love MCR” day will prove to the world how “the people of Manchester are proud of their city and united against anti-social behaviour”. But will this campaign unite our community, or paper over the social tensions driven by the dark side of the […]

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The second part of Andy Bowman’s interview with Professor Gus John from the Moss Side Defence Committee about the Moss Side riots of July 1981.

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