“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Manchester 1, Tories 0: Take Back Manchester Festival outperforms conference in the rainy city
“Get off your arse and do something..” sang the Commoners Choir on Saturday night, at a Partisan pre-protest party entitled ‘Fuck the Tories’. The following day, an estimated 50,000 people got off their collective arse to demonstrate outside the 2017 Conservative Party Conference, under shared slogans of ‘No More Austerity’, ‘Scrap the Pay Cap’ and […]
‘Our Sam – The Middleton Man’: Community needed to help bring Middleton’s most famous son back to life
“In ten minutes from the commencement of the havoc the field was an open and almost deserted space. The sun looked down through sultry and motionless air. Several mounds of human being still remained where they had fallen, crushed down and smothered. Some of these still groaning, others with staring eyes, were gasping for breath, […]
Free autonomous art festival at old Cornerhouse holds finale event this weekend
An autonomous art collective named Loose Space has been running a free arts festival from the old Cornerhouse building in Manchester City Centre for the past two weeks. The festival culminates on Saturday 1 April with a ‘Mystik Masquerade’ ball. The iconic building, which is owned by Network Rail, has been left vacant since the […]