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Devastation after huge fire at beautiful thatch-roofed pub The Smoker

It's thought it's been left with 'severe damage'.

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 28th October 2024

A beautiful thatch-roofed pub has been devastated by a huge fire that tore through it last week.

The Smoker pub in the village of Plumley is more than 400 years old and has been owned by Robinsons family brewers since 1949.

The fire broke out at around 5.30pm last Wednesday with the building quickly evacuated.

Nine fire crews attended the blaze, which burned well into the night.

The pub has now released a statement thanking all the messages of support it’s received as well as praising the efforts of fire crews, who ‘braved the flames to rescue our beloved cats’.

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No one was injured in the devastating fire at The Smoker pub, though the damage is ‘suspected to be severe’.

Soon the work will begin to restore The Smoker – one of the only thatched roof pubs in the Robinsons portfolio – to its former glory.

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William Robinson, managing director of Pubs at Robinsons commented: “I’d like to extend my thanks to the nine fire crews of Cheshire Fire and Rescue and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue services who both attended the fire and worked throughout the night to extinguish the flames.

“Alongside the fire crews, The Salvation Army were on site, playing an incredible role in looking after the welfare of the fire crews and others onsite.

“It will take quite some time to fully understand the level of damage that has been done, but we suspect it to be quite severe.”

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The Smoker pub shared on Facebook: “After the devastating events of Wednesday evening I would just like to say THANK YOU!!

“For the countless messages I have received asking after the welfare of myself and my family, for the support of Adam and Ashleigh we could not have got thru the nite without you, for Darren dropping everything to be there while all we could do was watch…

“But most of all to the firemen that braved the flames to rescue our beloved cats and bring them out safely….

“A massive heart felt THANK YOU.”

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Featured image: Supplied, Robinsons

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Pep Guardiola agrees new contract to stay at Manchester City for at least one more year

Danny Jones Danny Jones Pep stay at Man City for one more year new deal

Blues will be delighted to hear that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is staying after agreeing to sign a contract extension that will keep him at the club for at least one more year.

The Catalan coach and supremely talented tactician has won all there is to win with Man City and after completing not only a record-matching treble but making history by becoming the first English team to win four Premier League titles in a row, you could argue his Etihad project is well and truly completed.

Guardiola, who joined City back in 2016, has gradually been creeping towards the end of his most recent contract, leaving those slowly searching for his replacement and the fan base wondering what the future holds for their next chapter.

But it turns out they don’t have to worry about life after Pep for a little while longer, as the 53-year-old has now extended his stay for at least another season. The blue moon that has loomed over Manchester for the best part of a decade isn’t going anywhere just yet.

Breaking the news on Tuesday evening, 19 November, The Athletic‘s Sam Lee revealed that Pep Guardiola will remain head coach for another season after agreeing to a new one-year deal.

The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager, who is comfortably one of the most decorated and celebrated coaches in football history, was due to leave the club at the end of the current campaign.

However, although his contract would have seen him depart by June of next year, this new deal will now see him stay in post until the summer of 2026, which will talk his tenure to a full 10 years.

Although City themselves are yet to confirm the signing amid the international break, it’s only a matter of time before they deliver the news all Blues have been waiting for – news that will no doubt come as a huge relief given the immense success he has brought to East Manchester.

Despite waiting until now to seemingly decide his future, the man himself has actually been pretty clear on the matter, insisting that he “fell in love” with the club from the moment he got here and saying as far back as 2020 that “unless they [CFG] sack me, I will stay here.”

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Better still, while the details of the agreement are yet to be fully detailed, the report says that his new contract also includes the option to extend for a further year beyond that, meaning we could be looking at Pep in the dugout until 2027.

Should City go on to close the gap on current league leaders Liverpool, it would mean Guardiola would have overseen five title wins with the same team in a row: a feat only matched by very few in European football, most notably Juventus and Bayern Munich, the latter having managed 13 consecutive years.

Who knows if/when Guardiola will actually leave the Etihad Stadium for a new challenge, all we know is he changed modern football forever and has given Manchester – a city already spoilt in this respect – some of the most impressive football it’s ever seen.

All we do know is that the beautiful game’s passionate, bald, tiki-taka extraordinaire known simply as Pep is staying in 0161 for the time being and there are countless fans who are absolutely buzzing about it.

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Featured Images — Optus Sport/Sky Sports (via YouTube)/Rufus46 (via Wikimedia Commons)

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‘Shocking’ images taken with AI camera of drivers using mobiles and not wearing seatbelts released

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant

Thousands of people in Greater Manchester have been caught using mobile phones while driving or not wearing their seat belts.

Images captured by the state-of-the-art ‘Heads Up’ camera system – which uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human reviewers – as part of a trial in Greater Manchester, show drivers holding mobile phones in front of their face, to their ear while behind the wheel, and sometimes with passengers next to them.  

According to Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), in several cases, the cameras also found drivers and passengers, both passengers and children, not being securely fastened in their seats or not wearing seat belts at all.

The trial aims to detect drivers who are potentially breaking the law and putting themselves, their passengers, and other road users, at risk.  

‘Shocking’ images taken with an AI camera of drivers using mobiles and not wearing seatbelts have been released / Credit: TfGM

AI is used as the first filter in a bid to ensure privacy for “the vast majority of law-abiding motorists” while also checking hundreds of thousands of vehicles over an intermittent period, TfGM explained – something which would likely take a human reviewer several months to complete.

Images containing “evidence of an offence” then go through a two-stage human check to confirm that an offence has taken place.

Any offences detected as part of the trial were then passed on to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to consider for further action, however if no offence was committed, the image was immediately deleted by the software.

The trial – which was carried out by AECOM and Acusensus, on behalf of Safer Roads Greater Manchester – was held across the region throughout September and October to “gather data” and “understand the scale of the issue” to inform future education campaigns and enforcement.

It comes after it was revealed that nearly 10,000 people who live in, work in, or visit Greater Manchester have been killed or seriously injured on our roads over the last decade.

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During the deployment, the ‘Heads Up’ system recorded 812 drivers distracted by using mobile phones behind the wheel, and 2,393 incidents of seat belt non-compliance by drivers or passengers. 

As it stands, no offenders have yet been prosecuted from this trial, TfGM confirmed.

Featured Image – TfGM

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