Tag Archives: Salford

Seeds of resistance sown at housing crisis event in Salford

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A Manchester Housing Action event took place in Salford on Sunday, aiming to bring together local people and groups working to find solutions to the housing crisis. The free public event included contributions from Generation Rent, The Radical Housing Network and Focus E15.

Speakers from Focus E15 shared their victories in preventing evictions and disrupting housing conferences in London, offering advice on how similar victories could be attained in Greater Manchester.

The housing crisis is showing no signs of abating. In Greater Manchester, 3,971 tenants were evicted for rent arrears (Apr 2013 to Mar 2015), the highest two year level recorded over the last ten years, according to a report in the Manchester Evening News.

Manchester City Council’s annual count of rough sleepers in Manchester during a night in November 2014 came to 43; it was 7 in 2010. Local charities estimate that the real number is double that of the annual official count.

The event at Islington Mill in Salford was well attended by residents of Salford and Manchester, who had much to contribute during the discussion sessions. Steve North, a Unison Union member spoke of his experience of private renting. He had been in 13 properties in 13 years and now fears he will never get a permanent home for his family.

“Our rights are non-existent,” said North, who expressed that he did not feel able to challenge housing issues as he would issues at work.

Along with North, John Clegg from Unite in the Community Greater Manchester Branch also pledged union support for campaigns fighting for tenants rights.

Members of Focus E15, a London based grass roots campaign for decent housing for all, travelled to Salford to speak at the event. Emer Mary Morris has been a Focus E15 member since 2014, when the group occupied flats on the Carpenter Council Estate in East London, which had been left boarded up and empty for years. Morris also spoke of Focus E15 actions in disrupting the MIPIM UK international property fair last year:

Emer Mary Morris of Focus E15

Emer Mary Morris of Focus E15

“We dressed up as delegates going to the conference and actually rushed the doors and got the conference closed down for a couple of hours, while Boris Johnson was meant to be the next speaker.

“It was a really playful celebratory attitude that particularly Focus E15 bring to the protest. It’s not about being violent or anything, we are actually being very celebratory.”

This year’s MIPIM conference, which began yesterday, is taking place at Olympia in London. Both Salford City Council and Manchester City Council will have stands there, with the cost of the stands being up to £505 per square metre according to a report in the Salford Star, which describes the conference as ‘the largest property orgy in the country’.

Pollyanna Steiner is a community organiser for Generation Rent, a national campaign for tenants rights, and one of the organisers for the event along with Kate Hardy and Tom Gillespie. Steiner was happy with progress made during the meeting.

“It was a forum for freedom of expression about housing issues people are experiencing, and a safe place for sharing that. It was a space for progressing and exchanging ideas about how to organise against the kind of issues we are seeing in the housing crisis; for example, resistance to eviction and how to collaborate and share resources when you have so much taken away at a community level.”

Kate Hardy, a member of Feminist Fightback, was involved with the Focus E15 campaign in London. When she met Pollyanna they had the idea of inviting Focus E15 members up to talk about their work in London. Hardy said:

“There is a serious housing crisis in Manchester, which I think has been relatively hidden up to now.

“You can obviously see that there is the Ark and there is visible street homelessness, but what hasn’t been quite talked about is the kind of things we heard today, about tenants having their leases changed, very poor conditions and lots of attacks on people with disabilities. It has really made visible all the different strands of the housing crisis that are happening in Manchester.”

When asked what advice she would give to the people of Greater Manchester struggling with housing issues, Morris answered simply: “talk to each other.”

“The strongest power they have against us is that they isolate us and try to make people feel alone. The more that you talk to each other, the more you realise other people are going through exactly the same thing that you are. The more you gather together and start organising and talking, the more you can build a consistent movement and fight back.”

Conrad Bower

First published in the Manchester MULE, October 21st 2015

Further Information:
Generation Rent – http://www.generationrent.org
Focus E15 – http://focuse15.org
The Radical Housing Network – http://radicalhousingnetwork.org
The campaign established as a result of the event is, Manchester & Salford Housing Action – https://www.facebook.com/1mcrsalfordhousingaction?fref=ts

Housing crisis: when does a crisis become a disaster?

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Greater Manchester is being hard hit by the housing crisis just like the rest of the country. Tory incompetence in housing policy is pushing many people to the brink of homelessness, while more fall over that precipice every day.

The housing crisis is nothing new, there has been an awareness of the growing problem ever since the Right to Buy policy was introduced in 1980 by the Thatcher led Tory government. The policy gave 5 million council house tenants the right to buy their home from the local council at discount prices, due to the lack of new council houses being built this led to a severe depletion in council housing stock. The decrease in housing stock was exacerbated by the fall in council house building, by local authorities, to insignificant levels by 1996. The graph below also illustrates that the loss of a large proportion of new build houses that were council houses pre 1980 has not been filled by the efforts of Housing Associations and private enterprise.

Source – Dept for Communities and Local Government, via BBC News

Source – Dept for Communities and Local Government, via BBC News

Lack of new social housing

In an attempt to increase the amount of affordable housing the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (section 106) was introduced. This required a new housing development, of over 15 dwellings, to provide a set proportion of affordable housing, that proportion being 20% in Manchester. The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), a fixed rate tax on new developments, was also introduced in 2010 with the intention of it funding infrastructure projects to support the local area.

In 2013, Financial Viability Assessments (FVA) was introduced to the Section 106 affordable housing requirements. This meant that property developers could appeal against their obligations to provide affordable housing if they could show, by a viability appraisal, that doing so would reduce their profit margin too much, making the development non-viable. The problem with these viability appraisals is that they are presented by expensive property consultancies in a complex and impenetrable manner. ‘Councils just don’t have the expertise to challenge viability reports… We can’t argue back’, a senior planning officer was reported to say in the Guardian.

A major problem with FVAs is their lack of transparency as they are not subject to scrutiny. In a freedom of information request to Manchester City Council, it was revealed that MCCs financial viability assessment plan is not available to: the public, local councillors, local authority planning committee’s or local authority scrutiny committees. MCC also admitted that they did not get independent validation of FVAs using the Government District Valuer Service.

The Salford Star reported how in twelve months developers managed to dodge planning fees of over £19 million and avoided paying for over 800 affordable homes by submitting FVAs that showed they would not make sufficient profit. Yet those same property developers were still making up to £24 million in profit on each contract.

Devo Manc

The Devo Manc deal incorporates a £300 million housing fund, to build 10,000 – 15,000 homes over ten years, that is under the control of the newly appointed interim Greater Manchester (GM) Mayor Tony Lloyd. You may have hoped that this fund would be used to address the severe shortage of affordable housing; sadly that is not the case.

Another report from the Salford Star showed that £42.6 million of the GM housing fund has already been loaned to property developers to build on sites including Trinity Way in Salford and the contentious Pomona site in Trafford. Salford City Council failed to collect £1.28 million CIL for the Trinity way site, and lost the opportunity to build 76 affordable homes due to the developers FVA.

Gerald Kaufman pointed out at a recent public meeting on Devo Manc that £300 million was just ‘a drop in the ocean’ towards Greater Manchester’s housing needs, and that over ten years it amounts to only £3 million per borough per year.

Housing bubble

The shortage of housing is one of the major factors resulting in the rocketing price of housing. After the economic crash in 2007/8 the housing market was the first thing to recover as the rest of the economy struggled; despite the fact that an inflated housing market in the USA was one of the major factors in precipitating the economic crash. In July 2015 the Office for National Statistics stated the average price of a house in the UK was £282,000. The average wage in the UK is £24,648 gross, which only enables that person to take out a mortgage on a house worth £110,000.

In the Guardian, Owen Jones pointed out the hypocrisy of a Tory party calling itself the party of home ownership. ‘There are almost 250,000 fewer English and Welsh homeowners since David Cameron became prime minister. Even more staggeringly, the number of homeowners aged below 34 has plummeted by 50%’. He went on to describe how home ownership had dropped to its lowest level in three decades, and how the Tory ‘Help to Buy‘ scheme was inflating house prices.

Private rented sector

An inevitable outcome of the factors mentioned is that the private rented sector is booming, where people pay substantially higher rents for lower quality accommodation when compared to social housing. Private landlords now own one in five homes, and 4 out of 10 council houses sold with the Right to Buy scheme are also owned by private landlords. Private renters also have to deal with the insecurity of short term contracts and the ill health that often accompanies poor housing conditions. In 2010 the Building Research Establishment estimated it costs the NHS £600 million a year to deal with ill health caused by poor housing, another avoidable burden on our overstretched health system.

Generation Rent is an organisation fighting for change in the private rented sector. Their website states that private renting has doubled in the last decade, and that around a third of renters have had to cut back on food and heating. They campaign for improvements in: affordability, professional management (i.e. a national register of landlords), security of tenure and living conditions; and encourage people to lobby their local MP to improve private renting.

Source: National Housing Federation, via The Guardian

Source: National Housing Federation, via The Guardian

Tenants in the UK not only pay the highest average rents in Europe, they also pay the largest percentage of their income to pay the rent (see graph above). Along with house prices, rents have also risen. Between 2008-09 and 2012-13 average weekly rents increased in the private rented sector by 7% from £153 to £163, according to the English Housing Survey.

The problem of the 7% rise in rents is compounded by the drop in real wages. The International Labour Organisation reported in 2013 that the average real wage in the UK had fallen by 7.1%, relative to the average wage in 2007.

Homelessness

Insecure short term private rental contracts and shortage of social housing combined with cuts to social security and housing benefits, has seen a steady rise in homelessness in Greater Manchester and across the UK.

According to government figures, in the first quarter of 2014 the number of households accepted as statutorily homeless was 12,540; this had risen to 13,650 by the last quarter, a rise of 8.9 %. The number of English households in temporary accommodation rose from 58,440 to 61,970 between 31st March and 31st December 2014, a rise of 6%. Manchester City Councils annual count of rough sleepers in Manchester on one night last November came to 43, it was 7 in 2010; local charities estimate that the real number is double that of the annual official count.

Homelessness can only get worse with the cuts, £46 billion over 5 years, to social security announced by George Osborne. The removal of housing benefit entitlement from 18 to 21 year olds threatens a group who are already suffering rates of unemployment 3 times that of the general population. According to information published by Shelter the removal of housing benefit from 18 to 21 year olds will affect 19,894 people in the UK. Not all of these will have the option of living with family members as 62% of young people become homeless because friends and relatives will no longer accommodate them, often due to relationship breakdown. Housing benefit also pays for temporary and emergency accommodations such as hostels and domestic violence refuges. Cutting this benefit can only result in more young people, our future, sleeping rough.

A report by Crisis called ‘At what cost’ provides a compelling argument of the economic folly that allowing homelessness to persist and rise engenders. It estimates the cost to the taxpayer, over a year, of preventing a person becoming homeless or letting that person become homeless. In the examples presented (based on real costs and experiences of the homeless) it estimates the extra cost to the taxpayer of not preventing homelessness ranges between £3,000 and £19,000 per person.

Government Policy

So what is the current Tory government doing about tackling this crisis started by a previous Tory government in the 80s? Every policy this government pursues appears to make the problem worse. Along with the mentioned Right to Buy, Help to Buy, social security cuts and removing housing benefit from under twenty one year olds the following policies also exacerbate the housing crisis:

  • extending the ‘Right to Buy’ to housing association properties
  • forcing councils/ housing associations to sell their most expensive properties
  • bedroom tax
  • abolishing demands that developers provide a certain amount of affordable housing to rent in new developments
  • cuts to local authority Homelessness Services

Although the Tories are primarily to blame for this crisis, the previous Labour government and current Labour councils have done nothing to address the problem. Our political system has become so short sighted that it struggles to see beyond its own nose. Having only knee jerk reactions to whatever the mainstream media deems an important issue at the time, resulting in incoherent, disjointed and more importantly ineffective strategies to deal with problems like housing.

When does a crisis become a disaster? The answer is it already has, for the ever increasing number of homeless people on our streets; every day there are more living on the brink of disaster due to the austerity measures pursued by this government. The Tory agenda is to provide more security for those who already have it and less security for those who most need it, a cynical ploy to secure support amongst their voters. Everyone needs to stand up, be counted and become active if we are to oppose these Tory designs to take our society back to the Dark Ages.

Conrad Bower

Previously published in the Manchester Mule, 16th of October 2015

MANCHESTER HOMELESS CAMP POSSESSION ORDER GRANTED WITH SIX DAY STAY OF EXECUTION – Salford Star – with attitude & love xxx

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HOMELESS SEE LEGAL AID APPEAL ADJOURNMENT REJECTED

Homeless people living in The Ark camp on Oxford Road were refused an adjournment to appeal for legal aid today, as a judge at Manchester Civil Justice Centre granted Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester City Council a possession order over the occupied land.

The judge also refused an appeal against his decision but granted a six day stay of execution while an appeal application is made to a higher circuit judge. Later, top poet Lemn Sissay, Chancellor of Manchester University, visited the camp to show support.

via MANCHESTER HOMELESS CAMP POSSESSION ORDER GRANTED WITH SIX DAY STAY OF EXECUTION – Salford Star – with attitude & love xxx.

The Ark, Oxford Rd, under Mancunian Way

The Ark, Oxford Rd, under Mancunian Way

Punk journalism: can it challenge the mainstream media?

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Punk rock exploded into life in the 70s, firing the passions of a generation who were tired of jaded, distant and ostentatious mainstream rock groups. Punks emerged in local scenes all over the UK; the stripped-down instrumentation and simple style encouraged emergent punks to start up their own bands, in some cases self-producing their work and distributing it through alternative networks. The DIY principle was strong in punk, lyrics reflecting personal experiences and disillusionment with society, generally avoiding the love song mainstay of the mainstream. This resulted in a strong political streak to punk music, often rebellious and anti-establishment.

There is a new breed of journalism developing that shares much with the punk ethos. It is a journalism that has grown tired of the jaded and biased views of a mainstream media dominated by monopolies. It is a journalism emerging from local community DIY initiatives, in response to the barren local news landscape, occasionally crossed by the lightweight, directionless tumbleweed offerings of a mainstream press dedicated to serving itself, the affluent and the powerful rather than society as a whole. It is a journalism created by people passionate about bringing to light the important social justice and public accountability issues deemed unprofitable, unworthy or uncomfortable by the mainstream. It is punk journalism.

The Salford Star was born in 2005; its editor and founding member is Stephen Kingston, who has fond memories of being a punk back in the 70s. The Star burst into existence in response to Salford residents in Whit Lane being threatened with the demolition of their houses as part of a regeneration plan. “They were fighting like mad, I knew one of the people involved in that from other work, and he said what we need is to give people a voice.” Kingston was at the time working with a local paper called the Old Trafford News, which he decided to leave. “I said OK, we will do one for Salford. Trafford is about one square mile whereas Salford is a big city. So you need a big monster magazine for a big monster city, that was how it was born.”

Salford Star issue one

Kingston spent six months researching, talking to the community, holding public meetings to determine what the people of Salford wanted from a local paper. He also investigated the strong Chartist movement’s ties with Salford; there was a huge national meeting to promote social justice on Kersal Moor in 1838. The Chartist paper was called the Northern Star, hence one reason for naming the Salford Star, the other reason being that it had a tabloid ring to it that made it more accessible. It was a source of pride for Kingston that the paper had grown from the needs of the community and that the community members who helped found the paper were still on the board of directors.

Basically it inspired people like myself from that generation to say fuck ’em, we will do it ourselves.

Punk brought about significant change according to Kingston: “In terms of giving people self-confidence to do it themselves, it was the most influential movement probably ever. Because the people who got involved in punk suddenly got a sense that, yes they can take on authority.” He went on to describe how punks reacted to music, art and fashion they didn’t like by creating their own: “Basically that inspired people like myself from that generation to say fuck ’em, we will do it ourselves.”

The decline in local journalism in the UK has been rapid, with many commentators acknowledging that there is a deficit in the ability of the local press to hold people in power accountable. This decline is mainly attributed to the rise in online media sources, which has led to a drop in sales of local newspapers resulting in loss of revenues from the cover price and advertising. A report released last year by the Media Standards Trust summarised this decline in the UK:

  • Revenues of the four primary local newspaper companies in the UK, between 2005 and 2010, dropped by between 23% and 53%.
  • Media Wales staff fell from around 700 in 1999 to 136 in 2010.
  • Northcliffe Media employees fell from 4,200 to 2,200 between 2008 and 2012.
  • Media analyst Claire Enders calculated that 40% of jobs have gone in the course of five years in the UK regional press.
  • Between 2005 and 2012, a total of 242 local newspapers closed.
  • The total circulation of local/regional daily papers dropped from around 4.5m to around 2m between 2000 and 2013.

Co-founder of the Bristol Cable, Alon Aviram, is worried by the current state of the traditional press in the UK. Aviram spoke of his concerns over media conglomerates dominating the remaining local news scene and shaping the nature of the content (Lord Rothermere and Trinity Mirror are two major stakeholders in Bristol’s traditional local paper, The Bristol Post) and the media deserts caused by media consolidation and local papers closing down, “especially low-income communities where papers don’t necessarily operate because advertisers are not interested in reaching out to those communities. So there is a major issue where local media especially is just pretty boring and doesn’t fulfil its function of scrutinising the activities of those in power.”

Overturning old models

The Bristol Cable was established in 2013 by Aviram and Adam Cantwell-Corn with the idea of producing a good quality, sustainable, cooperatively produced media that could go beyond a niche market and appeal to a wide range of people. Aviram is also keen to overturn the old model of one-way direction of news from the media to the public. “We were interested in finding a way to have conversations and investigate established power, whether it was in the home or council or big business… in a way that was shaped differently from traditional organisations.”

The Bristol Cable’s name is symbolic of the philosophy underpinning the organisation: the strands of a cable making up a stronger entity as a whole, the circular cable logo symbolises an exchange of information that can go both ways and sustain itself. The cable also recalls Bristol’s industrial past.

The Manchester Mule was launched in 2008, its logo a bucking mule promising “news with a kick” and harking back to Manchester’s industrial heritage and its use of spinning mules. Its stated three core principles are to:

  • Provide an alternative to traditional local media
  • Use media as a tool for social change
  • Promote openness and inclusivity

As with many punk journalism titles, it has struggled to retain writers, with many contributors moving on to permanent paid positions and input to the online site becoming sporadic. The Mule recently provided a comprehensive local journalism course to encourage local writers to participate. One of the people to complete the course was Ben Beach, a history student at Manchester University planning on a career in journalism once he graduates. Beach thinks the Mule should “look at the Salford Star as something to aspire to … and report on stories, such as the homeless protest camps, that the Manchester Evening News [owned by Trinity Mirror] doesn’t really cover in any depth.”

mule_logo

The Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976 had a huge influence on Manchester according to Beach. He credits the gig with being the catalyst for some of his favourite bands, including Joy Division and New Order. Beach, who will soon be starting the third year of his degree, wants the Mule to offer an alternative viewpoint to the mainstream press and also spoke of the practical reasons for joining the Mule: “Getting work experience and internships is really difficult. While there are student newspapers and publications you can work on, the Mule offers a lot more scope. It covers all of Manchester and not just the student bubble, and it opens up opportunities.”

To become sustainable punk journalism organisations need to become not just a stepping stone to other opportunities, but a worthwhile destination in their own right. But who can afford to work for free (or very little) for any length of time? Very few people, and definitely not students who have likely built up a large student debt during their studies. How can punk journalism become sustainable?

At the Salford Star Kingston has struggled to keep the paper afloat and after 10 years he still doesn’t class it as a sustainable business. “We get loads and loads of donations, very small donations. We have sold 10 T-shirts this week, sold a mug to America, you know we make pounds on them. Advertising on the website, well everyone knows about that, you don’t get it, you get bits and pieces.” The problem with advertising in Salford, Kingston explained, is that the idea of a lot of independent shops has gone and the only businesses that can afford rent in places like MediaCityUK are “big multinationals”, which will not advertise in the Salford Star. He explained that other paid projects are undertaken, such as trade union magazines and teaching, to help keep the Star going.

We wouldn’t accept it [council funding] either because, even though we are going through tough times, we recognise that we need to remain independent.

Holding the powerful to account is also more likely to make you more powerful enemies than friends, which can affect advertising revenue. “Advertising for the actual printed magazine is very difficult, because people are scared of the council,” Kingston explains, saying any companies having contracts with the council, such as regeneration companies, will not advertise in the Salford Star in fear that their association with it would scupper any future deals with the council.

Bristol Cable has also made its fair share of enemies and is unlikely to get any funding from Bristol City Council because of its reporting on their activities. Aviram accepts this bad blood between the Cable and the council as inevitable: “We wouldn’t accept it [council funding] either because, even though we are going through tough times, we recognise that we need to remain independent.”

The Cable has so far been funded by grants, awards and a crowdfunding campaign that raised £3,300 and enabled it to put on 35 hours of free workshops across the city. Three hundred people attended events across the city in things like low-budget film-making, writing and using social media. The Cable also has a membership scheme costing as little as £1 a month; it has already gained over 400 members in the eight months the scheme has been running, who are on average paying £3 per month.

bristol cable

Aviram has high hopes for the membership scheme, hoping it can provide community members with a stake in the Cable and enable work on the paper being paid for rather than voluntary. “Our objective is to hopefully get thousands of people in the city to be members of the Bristol Cable, for a little as £1 a month, and in turn they can self-sustain the Bristol Cable – influence what sort of content they want to see in the paper, have a democratic say on key decisions and be more directly involved in the media as opposed to being just passive consumers of it.”

Michael Moore’s report Addressing the democratic deficit in local news through positive plurality’ compares the state of local media in the UK and US, and suggests the UK should adopt strategies used in the US to support local news. Contestable funding is brought forward as a way of funding local journalism titles and still allows them to maintain their independence, integrity and innovations. He makes three suggestions on how this funding pot can be achieved:

  • Google and/or other large internet companies to supply a one-off contribution. This has already been achieved in France, with Google giving €60m. Google has indicated it is willing to do a similar deal in the UK.
  • Companies collecting and using personal data for commercial benefit to pay an annual charge. Companies are currently doing this, but it is negligible in relation to the profits made.
  • A scheme where every adult in the UK would receive vouchers each year. These vouchers could then be donated to one or many non-profit news services, which can then redeem them for money. It would be funded by a combination of donations from digital intermediaries such as Google.

These excellent suggestions for funding local media need political pressure applying to bring them into play. The current government, while often stating the benefits of transparency, tends in its legislation to make things more opaque. It is possible that it sees a strong and independent local press as a threat to business, rather than a pillar of local democracy. if that is the case, these initiatives are going to need a serious amount of people-power to put them in place.

A flickering flame

Kingston said there were many stories in the Star that he was proud of. One in particular that stood out for him was the series of articles, relying on investigative journalism, the Star had done covering the regeneration of Salford., “They [Salford City Council]were saying, ‘oh, you’re going to get a new house, it’s going to be all lovely’. We knew exactly what they were doing. They were trying to socially cleanse the community. The community knew it, and we gave them a voice.”

At the Cable Aviram also listed reports relying on investigative journalism as the work he was most proud of. One of these reports was an investigation into pay conditions in the catering sector. The Cable carried out a research survey of more than 100 catering workers, resulting in a report presenting unique evidence of poor working conditions and large amounts of unpaid hours. The story got some national coverage with Aviram appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and You and Yours.

The punk journalism analogy is not perfect; very few analogies are. The punk movement of the 70s was an explosion that burned brightly, profoundly influencing people and society, but all too quickly died down to a burning ember, eventually being subsumed as just another current of mainstream music. The new journalism is more of a slow burn, an ember that needs coaxing into a conflagration, the flickering flame being kept alight by people’s passion for truth and justice. Punk was good at pointing out the inequities of society, but not strong on solutions to those problems. The new DIY journalism offers the opportunity of again effectively holding power to account and providing a platform for democratic debate, promoting the transition to a fairer society.

It is ironic that the revolution in information technology, which is proving so problematic to the traditional press, is providing the tools needed to ignite a burgeoning number of punk journalism titles. These flickering flames can only sporadically cast light into the dark reaches where power is abused. We must feed these flames with the oxygen of reliable funding to produce a blazing local media that can illuminate the abuse of power wherever it occurs.

First Published in the September 2015 edition of Contributoria.

Conrad Bower

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/conrad.bower
Twitter –  @ConradBower1
LinkedIn – uk.linkedin.com/in/ConradBower

Salford Star: a shining example of the free press

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I love the Salford Star. It publishes the kind of journalism that is hard to find in the mainstream media, due to the commercial and political pressures present.

A free press is getting increasingly hard to find in the UK. If a free press is a cornerstone of a good democracy, what does that say about ours?

The Salford Star is a fearless fighter for justice. It will soon be joined by a resurgent Manchester Mule, which will do for Manchester what the Salford Star has done for Salford