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The parents at Alderley Edge School for Girls keep comparing their lives to a Netflix drama. “It’s like a Netflix Drama,...
12/09/2026

The parents at Alderley Edge School for Girls keep comparing their lives to a Netflix drama. “It’s like a Netflix Drama,” says Mike Ward, whose daughter started at the school just last September. Or, “it could be a Netflix special,” Adam Gough – whose daughter until recently attended the school’s nursery – tells me.
So what would be the opening scene?

Would it be when, in one of the first meetings after the school announced its imminent closure, one parent stood up and matter-of-factly said: “if it’s just a million pound, I can write a cheque to keep it going”?

Or would it be when one of the parents received a cease and desist letter from the school’s lawyers while watching his three-year-old daughter at sports day. He’d spoken to the local press about the school’s closure, and the letter detailed how the school reserved the right to permanently exclude his child.

Alderley Edge School for Girls, which can date its history back to the formation of St Hilary’s in 1876, closed in late June as governors claimed the school was financially unviable. This is the story of how a group of well-to-do parents who thought they were saving a failing school ended up enemies with the people who ran it; how what should have been a rescue mission turned into a fight involving legal threats, accusations of bullying and, ultimately, the closure of the school even earlier than intended. Though the parents reassure us they don’t expect sympathy. A bunch of wealthy private school parents in Alderley Edge? “It doesn’t attract much as a sob story,” Gough says.

🔗 Read the full story via the link in our bio

29/08/2026

If you’ve ever walked down a street in Manchester and been smiled and waved at by a fundraiser in a dark blue jacket, collecting money for ‘Educate and Empower’, then you have Phillip Hanks to thank.

Google his company and you won’t be short of people calling it a “scam”, alleging that not only do they not support people with learning disabilities, as they claim, they also don’t pay their own staff. We have since found evidence of incidents of both these allegations being true.

Unfortunately, that’s not the half of it…

To try to get to the bottom of what was going on, we visited Hanks in his Snow White and the Seven Dwarves-themed offices this week, upon his beckoning: “Shall I give you a tour, do we want to do that first?” he asks us. “Because I think you’re going to have a little bit of a shock at what you’re going to see.”

As for the company’s co-director, Mohamed Belwassa, he assured us that Educate and Empower isn’t actually a charity, but is instead a community-interest company. He also denied claims that staff are not paid, and insisted they do support disadvantaged children.

Oldham is in trouble.Take the last few years as an example. Since 2001 and as recently as January the town’s politicians...
22/08/2026

Oldham is in trouble.

Take the last few years as an example. Since 2001 and as recently as January the town’s politicians have seen a well-documented spate of petrol bombings: of councillors’ houses, councillors’ cars, and the cars of wannabe councillors.

For a more recent example, take two days ago. That was the day Oldham Council tried, and failed, for the fifth time running, to muster enough cross-party support to elect a new leader — a position left vacant by Arooj Shah since May.

The council’s top lawyer has now declared them to be breaking the law. Officers will be writing to the government, asking the grown ups in Westminster to come sort Oldham out. This has never happened anywhere else, or ever before.

Forget Manchesterism — this is Oldhamism.

🔗 To read Alec Herron’s deep dive into Oldham’s political turmoil, click the link in our bio

Never have the Greens been so successful. Never has the fighting been so bad Our story today uncovers a major fallout in...
19/08/2026

Never have the Greens been so successful. Never has the fighting been so bad

Our story today uncovers a major fallout in the Green Party. As a result of our reporting, all four Green councillors in Bolton have threatened to quit the party.

Read via the link in our bio

The hoarding on the corner of Newton Street and Piccadilly stretches 14 metres high and 35 metres across, spanning a com...
15/08/2026

The hoarding on the corner of Newton Street and Piccadilly stretches 14 metres high and 35 metres across, spanning a complex of scaffolding topped with light fixtures, so the likes of KFC, Rolex, Land Rover and other brands can market to passersby deep into the night.

For 24 years, the old Victorian building - 67 Piccadilly - has been wrapped in said scaffolding, despite the council telling us just yesterday that there were no indications the building posed a risk to the public. So what’s going on?

🔗 Full story via the link in our bio

08/08/2026

What’s happening on Whitebottom Farm? In our latest podcast episode, Ophira and Lucy discuss the latter’s weekend read about Moovin’ Festival, which has landed in the sleepy village of Compstall on the edge of Stockport.

It seems that many of its 500 residents are not happy about these festivals. So unhappy, in fact, that one local has said life in Compstall is akin to living ‘in N**i Germany’, and likened a fence around Whitebottom Farm to ‘Auschwitz’.

These locals aren’t happy with the ‘face-melting rock’, or Craic by the Creek Irish festival, or the country festival either. What they’re least happy about is the attendees, who have turned their semi-rural paradise into a party haven.

As for Karl Hancock, the owner of Whitebottom Farm, he says he goes to considerable lengths to minimise noise disruption and rejects claims of excessive anti-social behaviour. He told us that if he were to see video evidence of such allegations, he would ban those people from his festivals immediately. Karl also says he and his family have farmed on the land long before Etherow Country Park was designated an SSSI and that he isn’t breaching planning laws.

Listen to our latest episode of The Manchester Briefing from The Mill wherever you get your podcasts (and hear Ophira and Lucy try, and repeatedly fail, to utter the phrase ‘screaming, urinating and defecating in bushes’. To read the full story about Whitebottom Farm, click the link in our bio 🔗

Today’s piece is a moving portrait of a man who rose through the world of architecture to become a self-made multi-milli...
07/08/2026

Today’s piece is a moving portrait of a man who rose through the world of architecture to become a self-made multi-millionaire, only to find himself in homeless accommodation earlier this year. So what went wrong?

🔗 Read the full story via the link in our bio

An update on yesterday’s story revealing that George Holmes, the longtime vice chancellor of the University of Greater M...
06/08/2026

An update on yesterday’s story revealing that George Holmes, the longtime vice chancellor of the University of Greater Manchester, has been sacked.

Holmes was appointed as vice chancellor in 2006, when it was called Bolton University, making him the longest-serving university leader in the country. He was suspended in May last year, weeks after our reporting raised questions about financial deals being done by university staff. At the time, the university described his suspension as a “precautionary measure” that did not imply “any assumption of guilt.”

Shortly after publication, George Holmes provided us with this statement via his solicitor:

“The decision of the University’s governing board to dismiss me after over 20 years of loyal service to the University of Greater Manchester is a travesty. I have been denied natural justice, due process and the right to be presumed innocent of all that I have been accused of. Even a first-year law student learns at the outset of their degree course that these are the basics of a fair process that are the right of any citizen under our English legal system.

I look forward to the opportunity to clear my name in due course, and to holding the individuals at the University, and their professional advisers, PwC and Eversheds, personally to account when the time comes. I am a patient man. It will be worth the wait. I will not be commenting further until my name is cleared.”

29/07/2026

We switched things up at The Mill’s mayoral hustings on Monday! We opened the evening by asking each Greater Manchester mayoral candidate a tailored question just for them, based on one of their manifesto pledges.

Unfortunately Reform’s candidate, Sian Astley, declined to take part in our hustings just before things kicked off. We’re still very keen to hear from Sian as we were looking forward to having the top five candidates on the panel, and think it’s really important that our readers have the opportunity to learn more about her manifesto before we head to the polls tomorrow.

So , please respond if you’d like to (candidates were allocated three minutes to answer their tailored questions).

🔗 To read more about our hustings, click the link in our bio

📸 Photos by Joel Goodman

The Mill’s mayoral hustings – which sold out in just three days – was our attempt at doing a hustings (please, forgive u...
28/07/2026

The Mill’s mayoral hustings – which sold out in just three days – was our attempt at doing a hustings (please, forgive us) a bit differently.

We wrote curated questions for every candidate, had members of the audience send their own questions in before the event, and took further live audience questions across a wide range of topics: the environment, economy, housing and homelessness.

🔗That’s all in today’s newsletter - link in bio

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