Marks and Spencer are keen to flaunt their fair trade credentials. But is it fair that the company who supply their cakes is undermining new employment laws designed to protect agency workers?
Greater Manchester’s local authorities are affirming official schemes to reduce carbon emissions. But so far their plans appear more aspirational than actual, and driven by the interests of business rather than preparing the city for a sustainable future.
From Sunday through to Wednesday the Tories will return to the Petersfield conference complex in its centre. There will also be protests, since for the entire history of its maturity as a city Manchester has been for everything the Tories oppose, and opposed to everything the Tories are for.
Withington Liberal Democrat MP John Leech’s decision to vote in favour of the government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill last week must have raised eyebrows among his constituents, considering his equally controversial history of healthcare campaigns.
If it was predictable that the conditions in England’s urban areas would lead to social unrest at some stage, it was also predictable that the authorities would react in a hysterical and short-sighted fashion when it arrived. One man in Manchester stands out in particular; District Judge Khalid Qureshi at the Manchester Magistrate’s Court.
In Manchester on Tuesday night thousands descended upon the city centre: some to loot, some to fight the police, some for the thrill. What happened in Greater Manchester and across the country showed the ugly end-point of the political and economic project of the last 30 years. The Mule Editorial Team give their perspective on the Manchester riot…
The austerity of the last year has thrown the UK’s housing crisis into sharp relief, with a leaked memo from communities minister Eric Pickles warning how housing benefit cuts may see 40,000 families lose their homes. Yet this crisis stretches far beyond the current government, with 22,723 households in Manchester alone trapped on the city’s waiting lists in 2009, and solving it is not on the political agenda. Lisa Ansell explains.
