Bolton

Boy, 16, among four arrested after police find £1 million drugs stash in car boot in Bolton

The seizes were part of Greater Manchester Police's ongoing 'Operation Venture

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant - 3rd May 2023

A teenager is among four people who have been arrested after police in Bolton conducted patrols to “deter serious violence from streets” this past weekend.

As part of Greater Manchester Police‘s (GMP) ongoing ‘Operation Venture’ – which was set up back in 2022 to tackle violent crime and serious criminality across Greater Manchester – officers were deployed to Bolton this past Saturday (29 April), and spotted a “suspicious car” parked up on Chorley Road while they were doing their rounds.

According to GMP, the officers decided to act on their suspicions and initially approached to search the car and the occupants under the misuse of drugs act, before further searches led to the seizure of “a significant amount” of snap bags containing what is believed to be cocaine and around £1,000 in cash.

On top of this, another vehicle was stopped a short time later on Victory Street in a different area of Bolton, and following searches, three sealed packages were found in the boot.

The sealed packages were believed to be of class A drugs around 10 kilos in weight, according to GMP – with an estimated street value of £1 million pounds.

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After the day of targeted searches, in the end, four men Four men between the ages of 16 and 49 were arrested on suspicion of Possession with Intent to Supply, GMP has confirmed, and they were each taken into custody ahead of being questioned by officers.

Speaking on the success of Operation Venture in Bolton so far, Chief Inspector Justine Topping from GMP’s Bolton District said: “Having additional resources available to deploy through Operation Venture means that we can tackle serious crimes robustly to make Bolton a safer place to live and work.

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“The action highlights our endeavour to take illegal supply from our streets.

“Officers from Operation Venture are out and about every night working hard and patrolling hotspot areas to keep communities across Greater Manchester safe, so if you see our officers out and about, you can speak to them about any concerns you might have.

“We all have a part to play in fighting, preventing and reducing crime.”

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Victory Street in Bolton / Credit: Google Maps

Greater Manchester Police is also encouraging anyone with any information about crime in their area to report it, no matter how big or small.

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This can be done through GMP’s LiveChat facility at gmp.police.uk, or alternatively, you can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111, while 11-17 year olds can pass on information anonymously through the dedicated platform Fearless.org.

“In an emergency, always dial 999,” GMP concludes.

Featured Image – GMP

Bolton

Greater Manchester clubs and Kellogg’s team up for free kids’ football camps this summer

Danny Jones Danny Jones Kellogg's free summer football camps in Greater Manchester 2024

A whole host of Greater Manchester clubs are teaming up with cereal brand Kellogg’s this summer to hold tens of thousands of free football camps for kids this summer.

Joining the nationwide initiative alongside dozens of other teams across the country, local sides including Manchester City, Bolton Wanderers, Salford City and more will be taking part in a glorious sporting summer helping the opportunity to stay active and entertained during the holidays.

Kellogg’s Football Camps and similar schemes from the company have been running for many years and this latest edition is set to be the biggest yet, with 300,000 completely free days of footballing fun set to be offered out to children aged 5-14 all over the UK.

With the multiple clubs from in and around the region enlisting their help, not to mention Euro 2024 and the Olympics just on the horizon, it’s going to be a great couple of months for the little ones.

With the likes of Stockport County, Wigan Athletic and other nearby organisations such as the Foundation 92 (the educational charity arm formed by the Man United’s Class of ’92 group) getting involved, the physical activity-driven programme will be a great outlet for kids this school break.

This fresh push for physical activity comes after recent research found that 90% of parents in the North West would like their child to experience less screen time and take part in more outdoor activities and 7/10 of mums and dads from the region feel there aren’t enough accessible activities local to them.

Entry for the Kellogg’s camps kicked off this month and will run until 24 June, with around 2,500 places released every week. The sessions themselves will run throughout July and August 2024 as well as a handful in June and September.

To mark the occasion this year, they also revealed the world’s longest football scarf featuring a total of 74 different teams from England, Wales, and Scotland, measuring approximately 100m long.

Half-and-half scarves can still do one but this is pretty ace, right?

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The vast majority of parents polled said they felt participating in team sports can help build crucial life skills and that’s exactly what the campaign is hoping to achieve. Brilliant stuff.

Kellogg’s has long held not only a local connection to Greater Manchester but a partnership with English football in general (if you have one of those old footy cereal bowls you know all too well), so it’s nice to see them still getting involved and help parents keep their kids occupied for a little while this summer.

The sign-up process is pretty simple: merely grab a promotional box of the brand’s cereal which millions of British kids already eat for their cereal, scan the barcode to validate the purchase and then select your desired club via email to book your kids onto the free football days. You can see the T&Cs HERE.

As it happens, they aren’t the only food brand offering similar sporting freebies this year:

McDonald’s set to deliver free football coaching to thousands of Greater Manchester kids

Featured Images — Supplied/Bolton Wanders FC (via X)

Bolton

Viewers react to discovering new TV drama A Gentleman in Moscow was actually filmed in Bolton

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant

Viewers are just discovering that the new TV drama series, A Gentleman in Moscow, was actually filmed in… Bolton.

That’s right, whether you can believe it or not – and much to the shock of local residents, too – the Greater Manchester town had itself a bit of a Stalin era-themed makeover last year, and served as the perfect place to recreate the Russian capital city for a brand-new TV drama miniseries starring Ewan McGregor.

Based on the bestselling 2016 novel of the same name by Amor Towles, the new series titled A Gentleman in Moscow has now started airing on streaming platform Paramount+ in the UK.

Over the course of the gripping eight-part series, it tells the story of aristocrat Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, played by McGregor, who has recently returned to Russia from Paris, and spends decades banished to an attic hotel room following the October Revolution after being sentenced to house arrest by a Bolshevik tribunal.

But, despite the very-Russian theme running through the show – which also stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Fehinti Balogun, Daniel Cerqueria, Johnny Harris, Leah Harvey, and more – production crews never actually ventured to Moscow to film.

Instead, they chose several locations across northern England, and one of those locations was, none other than, Bolton.

Filming began in Victoria Square outside Bolton Town Hall on 27 February 2023, with the Town Hall itself appearing a handful of times throughout the show’s first episode, and took place into March, before returning again in April 2023.

Viewers have been reacting to discovering that the new TV drama, A Gentleman in Moscow, was actually filmed in Bolton / Credit: Showtime & Paramount TV

As well as Bolton, Liverpool Town Hall was used as a filming location in June 2023, and filming also took place in Halifax and Leeds Civic Hall too.

Eagle-eyed viewers who tuned into the first episode of the show and spotted Bolton Town Hall in all its glory were quick to head on over to social media to share their reactions – and disbelief, mostly – that the Greater Manchester town had an unexpected starring role.

One fan wrote on X: “Very bizarre moment for me. I’m from northwest England, but live in Moscow. I’m watching the new TV series ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’, couldn’t help but notice that it had been filmed in Bolton…”

“Learnt that A Gentleman in Moscow was filmed in Bolton yesterday and my interest shot way up. How did they pull that off?,” another viewer commented.

A third pointed out that Bolton has actually doubled as Russia before.

“It’s been used before for same purpose,” they wrote on X, “In the late 80s when I was in my teens, we went shopping to Bolton, and there was a giant portrait of Stalin hanging from the front of the town hall. My mum thought there had been a Militant takeover on the Council.”

Others were also quick to add that Bolton has been a popular filming location for movies and TV shows for the past couple of decades.

Peaky Blinders, Happy Valley, Red Rose, Traces, The Reckoning, and Brassic are just some of the smash-hit shows having been filmed in the town in recent years.

One viewer wrote: “When I first visited Bolton in the early 90s, I was told the Town Hall often stood in for European Government buildings in films. No need to change a good thing”, while another commented that they “thought it looked familiar”.

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You can watch A Gentleman in Moscow streaming now on Paramount+ in the UK.

Featured Image – Showtime & Paramount TV

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