Hundreds gathered in St Peter’s Square last night to protest against the rise in drink spiking in Manchester and across the UK.
On what is typically the biggest day of the week for student nights out, rafts of young people chose to boycott nightclubs on Wednesday night and instead take to city centre hubs up and down the UK to stand in solidarity and demand that drink spiking and needle spiking be taken seriously by authorities amid a recent rise in incidents.
Manchester’s ‘End Spiking Now’ demo last night was called for by local groups under the initiative ‘Girls Night In‘, and the boycott was part of UK-wide protests against spiking in clubs and bars.
Opening the Manchester demonstration in front of at least 1,000 young people, according to The Guardian, 21-year-old student Lucy Nichols declared “an emergency response to an emergency situation”, explaining that there is a “spiking epidemic” sweeping the UK and adding that: “Every single women here will have a story about them or one of their friends being spiked.
“Now we can’t even do the age-old trick of covering up our drinks, because they are spiking us with needles now too.”
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Striking images from last night’s demonstrations were shared on social media.
Photos shared to social media showed demonstrators holding up banners with a wide range of phrases and rallying cries, including one that said “The only injection I want is Pfizer!” and another saying “Pankhurst would be PISSED” close to the statue of the Mancunian suffragette in St Peter’s Square.
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“I have never felt safe”, “Educate your sons”, and “Stop spiking us you freaks” were more examples of banners to sum up why the demonstrations are taking place.
Following the gathering and collection of speakers in St Peter’s Square, in a defiant stance, one of the organisers encouraged the crowd to walk with them through the streets of the city centre.
They began walking down Oxford Road, chanting: “Whose streets? Our streets”.
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Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham was also in attendance at the protest last night, alongside Greater Manchester’s Night Time Economy Adviser and co-founder of the Warehouse Project, Sacha Lord.
Helen Pidd – The Guardian’s North of England Editor – explained that she spoke to the mayor following the protest last night, and relayed in a tweet that he said: “This one is on us: men, lads, boys.
“That might mean calling out mates for their behaviour or it might mean changing our own behaviour.”
Sacha Lord also said on Twitter this morning: “Last night, myself and Andy Burnham attended the boycott to show support and listen. We will continue to meet and work with the organisers and I’d urge other city regions to do so too.
“The message is clear – enough is enough.”
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A number of nightclubs in Manchester city centre – including student hotspots 42nd Street and The Venue – announced ahead of the boycotts and demonstrations last night that they would be closing doors to show support.
As well as organising the boycott and last night’s demonstrations, women have launched a petition calling on the government to make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests on entry.
Protestors in Manchester have also penned an open letter to Andy Burnham and other leaders at Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) setting out demands, including that GMCA provides bars and nightclubs with anti-spiking devices, enforce more staff training, and create a toolkit for women detailing measures venues should have in place in order to be licensed.
The group would also like to see designated employees on hand to deal with problems of spiking and harassment, as well as for venues to produce their own clear procedures on how to deal with such incidents.
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The key focus is for women’s safety to be made more of a priority and for this to be clear to both staff and customers who are visiting any venue in Manchester.
Curious mini Mancs called on to help fix ‘special machine’ at Science and Industry Museum
Emily Sergeant
Curious mini Mancs are being called on to head down to one of Manchester’s most-visited museum’s to help fix a “special machine”.
With schools across Greater Manchester gearing up have two-weeks off over Easter very shortly, leaving many parents, carers, and guardians with the task of keeping the kids entertained and educated at the same time, the Science and Industry Museum has, thankfully, just announced a wide range of events and activities especially for the holidays.
And a good chunk of the events planned over the next couple of weeks are actually open to getting involved with for completely free of charge.
The museum, which is based right in the heart of Manchester city centre, is giving families the chance to “spring into action” as it hosts a full programme of “curious contraptions, dynamic demonstrations, and immersive experiences” over the next three weeks.
Kicking off this Friday (23 March) and running right through to 14 April, the Science and Industry Museum is inviting “inventors and tinkerers of all ages” down to explore the world of magnificent machines during the jam-packed half term.
Some of the activities on the lineup include creating a giant marble run, experiencing the thunderous sounds of Greater Manchester’s historic mill machinery, and venturing on a mission to explore mechanics around the museum, as well the opportunity to visit the two of its most talked-about exhibitions that are currently running – Operation Ouch! Food, Poo and You, and Power UP.
Machines are at the heart of many of the stories told at the Science and Industry Museum, which is why one of the most intriguing events on the Easter holidays lineup this year has to be the chance for young inventors to join the museum’s team of Explainers and “embark on a mission to mend a special machine” and search for pieces to help fix an engine.
Curious mini Mancs are being called on to help fix a ‘special machine’ at the Science and Industry Museum / Credit: Science Museum Group
Visitors can also “turbo-charge their tinkering” by experimenting with a giant up-cycled marble run created by Wild Rumpus, and “combine their creativity with the forces of gravity and friction” to build their own circuits and mechanisms.
There’ll also be plenty of demonstrations of the museum’s historic textiles machinery over the next three weeks too, so visitors can be transported to the past and learn what life was like for Manchester’s factory workers in the Industrial Revolution and the roles that people of all ages played in the production of cotton.
And of course, if you still haven’t yet been able to make the most of the museum’s most-visited exhibitions, then this Easter is your chance to do just that.
There’s a jam-packed lineup of FREE events at the museum this Easter holidays / Credit: Science Museum Group
World-premiere exhibition, Operation Ouch! Food, Poo and You, will be taking visitors on a digestive journey over the next three weeks, while the ultimate gaming experience, Power UP will also be open every day, with five decades of games to explore.
Both FREE entry tickets to the museum, and charged-for tickets for Operation Ouch! Food, Poo and You and Power UP, can be booked now on the Science and Industry Museum website.
Find more about all the activities taking place at the museum over the Easter holidays here.
Featured Image – Science Museum Group
City Centre
A spin around Northern Quarter’s newest record shop with a witty name and a treasure trove of vinyls
Danny Jones
We recently popped our heads into the wittily named Withy Groove Records, the new vinyl exchange and all things music that quietly opened up its doors late last year but is now one of the latest hidden gems in the Northern Quarter.
Opening up on the edge of Shudehill on the edge of NQ and just down the road from the Withy Grove Stores buildings (hence the clever little name), the new basement record shop technically began trading in December 2023 but has only just had its front signage completed and the name put above the door.
We especially like the new striking Haçienda-inspired lettering, not that we’re biased towards black and yellow logos or anything…
But seriously though, this little den of old discs, vintage vinyl and music memorabilia is an absolute must-visit for any audiophiles out there.
From the moment you step inside to see the walls lined with countless circles of PVC, iconic album covers and old gig posters, you immediately feel like you’re walking into a player’s paradise and ready to discover a diamond in the rough.
If you’re a regular vinyl collector, the experience will feel familiar and there isn’t necessarily any one thing that makes it feel different from other independent record shops other than the fact it is literally like a bunker built by someone who left society before the invention of the compact disc.
Founder Paul, who owns the unit situated just next door to Rambo’s — Manchester’s iconic and longest-running tattoo parlour — set up Withy Groove as nothing more than a passion project from one music lover to another, i.e. this city as a whole, and we fully expect Mancs to fall in love with this one too.
Housing everything from 60s and 70s rock and roll classics, a healthy stock of psychedelia and genre-bending artists like Frank Zappa, to deep cuts throughout the Manchester music scene, a dedicated ‘rare and collector’s items’ section with some serious valuable issues and more, it’s a gold mine.
Beyond both lesser-known and legendary LPs, you’ll find plenty of 45sin the several boxes of seven-inch singles, books, frames, as well as t-shirts, merch and even an old pair of maracas that Bez would be proud to shake about with the best of them. There really is a bit of everything.
If you like those somewhat rough and ready spaces that don’t need a whole lot of bells and whistles to what they do best, which in this case is buy and sell records, then Withy Groove is a great place to gander the next time you’re feeling all muso and fancy some old fashioned analogue shopping.
In fact, still in their early days, it couldn’t be any more old school in here as it’s strictly cash-only at the minute — but, once again, given the whole vibe of the shop, there’s something very nice and tangible about the physical music experience it taps back into.
If you’re heading out for a really good find on Record Store Day 2024, we definitely recommend you venture into here and, better still, there are some really good new releases and special prints on this year’s list.
The Northern Quarter’s newest record shop gets a thumbs up from us.