31 May 2010: Twelve hours after the Free Gaza flotilla was fired at from Israeli helicopters in international waters, a protest was gathering outside the BBC on Oxford Road in Manchester. It has been a regular site for pro-Palestinian protests in the city since the December 2008/January 2009 Israeli attacks on Gaza. People considered the BBC’s coverage bias, and anger against the Corporation intensified when it refused to air the Disasters Emergency Committee’s subsequent Gaza appeal. Read more
Celebrating the hypocritical city?
Sunday 20 June is Manchester Day – the city’s first ever. Dozens of colourful floats and thousands of people will take part in a parade to celebrate Manchester’s cultural diversity and creativity. That same day is also World Refugee Day – a fact conveniently forgotten. There are more than 20,000 refugees living in Manchester. Most [...]
Conservative Co-ops: privatisation by the back door
To much fanfare in a speech in Manchester in 2007, David Cameron announced the launch of the “Conservative Co-operative Movement”, an organisation supposedly independent of the Conservative Party and designed to “campaign for the principles of local, democratic, voluntary, public ownership of public services and public facilities.”
The politics of life
While our rulers claim to embrace democracy with a dangerous fervour, it’s probably fair to say that many of us have rather less enthusiasm for the elections that come around with such regularity.
Council failing to deliver affordable housing
Manchester City Council is delivering just 13 per cent of affordable housing required in the area, according to homeless charity Shelter’s new ‘Housing League Table’ website.
A boost for education over profit?
Alan Gilbert, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, has announced that he will retire at the end of the current academic year. Former Students Union officers Robbie Gillett and Jennie O’Hara discuss his record.
Books: Small Rocks launch
Small Rocks is a collection of writing from people made destituteby the immigration system.
Fascist violence in Stoke as the EDL march again
Last year far right group the English Defence League (EDL) whipped up anti-Muslim sentiment across Britain by holding a number of high profile demonstrations against what they see as the creeping Islamification of British society. Last weekend saw their first march of 2010. MULE sent reporter Tim Hunt to his native Stoke-on-Trent to witness events.
When the other Miliband came to town
Last week Ed Miliband came to Manchester for a chat. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change dropped in for a discussion about the stakes of climate change and the government’s plans before jetting off to Copenhagen for this week’s highly-anticipated UN Conference. MULE was in attendance, and not that surprised to be [...]
Party Business in Manchester
On Tuesday 1 December members of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce got another chance to schmooze the government-in-waiting. Shadow Minister for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, John Penrose, was in the city to discuss the Conservative Party’s plans to “cut red tape”. A match made in heaven. But are the Tories business-friendly enough?
Would a council really serious on tackling climate change make this decision?
On Thursday 19 November the Manchester City Council Planning Department approved the demolition of 200 year old cottages along with neighbouring environmental and historical oasis Hasty Lane in order to make way for additional extra airport hangers which will double Manchester Airport’s freight capacity.
It’s Xmas – Welcome to Manchester Plc
Businesses in the centre of Manchester must wish it could be Christmas every day. Or to be more precise, that the Christmas shopping period came more frequently. They got an early present of their own this week, when the Council proudly announced it will be providing city-centre shops with a free marketing campaign worth £600,000.
The EDL: The BNP’s Useful Idiots? (Part 2)
The second part of Ragnor Ironpants look into the links between the English Defence League (EDL) and the BNP…
The EDL: The BNP’s Useful Idiots? (Part 1)
With the EDL meeting up the road in Leeds a week back, Ragnor Ironpants digs below the surface to find what’s really behind this new phenomenon.
The EDL and Mainstream Society
With the EDL marching on our streets and the BNP on Question Time, it would be easy to dismiss this resurgence in extreme-right feeling as the product of a minority group on the fringes of our comfortably democratic, free-thinking, liberal society. But if we really want to “Smash the BNP” or the EDL, as the [...]
Griffin on Question Time: a False Victory for Smug Liberals
A week on from his infamous performance on Question Time, MULE columnist Ragnor Ironpants weighs up the impact of the Northwest’s favourite Euro-MP’s TV appearance.
Bye Bye Birley Fields
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is planning a new development on green space in Hulme. They label the construction the “greenest campus in the UK” and say plans will balance the needs of the local community, but Hulme residents have their doubts.
Lobbying at the Tory Conference
It’s been over a week since the Tory conference left town. For several days, inside the almost militarised city centre, shadow ministers and carefully briefed mouths gushed ‘honesty’. Manchester didn’t seem to pay that much attention. Manufactured ovations to parts of Cameron’s speech and interviewees practically reading off their hands to emphasise how great Dave [...]
Manchester Blues: Tories coming to town
Another year, another Annual Party Conference sets up camp in Manchester. The draped banners are not the red we’ve come to expect, however, and this time the selection of Manchester as host is itself politically significant. The Conservatives are coming up North and are seeking to destroy Labour’s last remaining strongholds in the urban [...]
No Mayor for Manchester
It’s a week before the official report on the governance consultation is released, but the City Council yesterday revealed that the proposal to give Manchester an elected mayor have been met with a ‘no’ by two thirds of those responding.