“Nasi is on a ladder. Heʼs not coming down any time soon”. As we file into the theatre Nasi is there in front of us, standing high up on the very tall ladder. His demeanor is casual and relaxed but unconvincing. This tense sight amplified by the sense that we had intruded midway through a […]
Peterloo and Protest at the People’s History Museum
A new exhibition opened last Saturday at the People’s History Museum in Manchester to mark two hundred years since the Peterloo Massacre. Featuring artefacts never displayed before, as well as a short film giving the whole history, Peterloo is brought up to date with a Protest Lab, where people from Salford and beyond can put […]
10 reasons why the bus companies’ partnership proposals will not ‘revolutionise’ our buses: we need regulation
Why do passengers and staff want a regulated network when £100 million has been offered for the alternative – partnerships? The fact that bus companies are suddenly offering a £100 million partnership package as an alternative to regulation shows just how great re-regulation of our buses is, and how much bus companies will do to […]
Greater Manchester plan for jobs, homes…and the environment?
After several delays the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has published the new draft of its Spatial Framework. The previous version, published in late 2016 met considerable criticism, especially from groups campaigning on green space but also from other quarters, including our own critique of its assumptions of accelerated “economic growth”. On the other side the […]
Philosophy Café: ‘Should democracy tolerate those who wish to destroy it?’
In what feels like a time of increasing social and political uncertainty, I have found myself employing a few strategies to keep my mind from imploding. They include thinking about the ‘big’ questions, as they tend to withstand the relentless plot twists of the theatre of current affairs, paying more attention to the questions posed, […]
Bus franchising: a route to cleaner air for Greater Manchester
“Levels of air pollution in Greater Manchester(GM) are lethal and illegal”, states a new analysis by King’s College London, estimating that 1.6 million life years will be lost in GM in the next century due to poisonous air. The equivalent is reducing the life expectancy of all current residents by six months. A recent World […]
Accountability for the Mayor of Greater Manchester: participatory governance in the 21st century
Guest article from Steady State Manchester: It has been over a year since Greater Manchester elected its first Mayor. Since then, Mayor Andy Burnham has worked to build the Mayor’s office as an institution almost from scratch and within the confines of the devolution agreement with central government. This is no small feat, and the Mayor’s […]
Developers are turning our heritage into profit, and we’re paying them for the pleasure of it
Flats at Crusader Works, one of the largest surviving textile mills and new luxury property venture by Capital & Centric where one bedroom apartments are going for heady sums upwards of £189,000, are on sale again. Since the project began the MEN has released a slew of articles gushing about how the development, on Chapeltown […]
Be the media in Manchester: apply for our free journalism course starting this April
This spring The Meteor is teaming up with the Centre for Investigative Journalism to offer a comprehensive twelve session training course in community journalism. If you have ever been disappointed by media coverage in your area before, this is a chance to set the record straight by producing the news yourself; covering the stories you […]
The Addy land squat: a missed opportunity for Hulme?
When masked bailiffs arrived to clear the North Hulme Adventure Playground of a group of squatters and dismantle the homes they had built there, it marked the end of the most recent in a series of occupations, and eventual evictions, of non-residential buildings across Manchester. The site’s residents spent three months clearing, building and planning […]