A lorry driver has been hailed as a hero after parking underneath a bridge on the M62 where a man was threatening to jump.
A distressing image released yesterday showed a man sitting on the edge of the railing of the motorway bridge – but when an approaching lorry driver became aware of the severity of the situation, he parked his vehicle underneath.
This ultimately prevented the man from jumping and “saved his life”, Leeds Live reported.
The lorry driver kept the vehicle stationary in that same position until the man was safely escorted down.
Vulnerable Citizen Support Leeds – which is a community organisation that provides help and assistance to those struggling with mental health issues and homelessness – shared the harrowing image and story on Facebook, writing: “IT’S OKAY – NOT TO BE OKAY.
The lorry driver parked his vehicle underneath the part of the bridge where the man was sitting / Credit: Vulnerable Citizen Support Leeds
“This is a picture from the M62 motorway bridge [and] a passerby has posted it to raise awareness of the situation at hand [but] what people don’t understand is that to jump on the other side of any bridge, indicates something drastically wrong with their mental health.
“I have family who have been at this point before and still had to wait a week for an appointment when she found herself on top of a bridge.
“This post is to raise that awareness… and you can or should speak out.
“What a trucker, stopping on the hard shoulder and leaving his truck there to ensure when he did jump, it wasn’t a longer distance to the floor.”
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If you or anyone you know is struggling right now, please know that you are never alone and there are many different places you can reach out to for support right here in Greater Manchester.
These include:
Manchester Mind – An organisation that has supported people in Manchester for over 30 years. Most services are now available over the phone, by email or video call. The number is 0161 769 5732 and the opening hours are Mon – Fri 10am – 2pm.
The GM Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust – The local NHS helpline is open 24/7 which you can call any time, day or night, if you feel your mental health is beginning to suffer: 0800 953 0285.
Andy’s Man Club – A group dedicated to starting conversations about mental health, assuring people that it’s ok to talk. You can contact them by email on: [email protected].
CALM – The Campaign Against Living Miserably supports people via phone and webchat. You can call 0800 58 58 58 or speak to a support worker online. Open 5pm to midnight.
Samaritans – The Manchester & Salford Samaritans offer emotional support by telephone and email. The phone lines and email support are available 24/7. Call 116 123 or visit the website.
Featured Image – Vulnerable Citizen Support Leeds
UK News
A preview of a promising philanthropic project as Embassy Village makes progress
Danny Jones
Embassy Village, the upcoming homeless village that is set to open in Manchester, is making quick progress, and we recently got to preview the project with an early tour of the site.
Located just outside the city centre proper in Castlefield and near the border into Salford, the humanitarian housing project is looking to provide not just shelter but food and drink, employment, education and all manner of support to local rough sleepers.
Starting out as a controversial shipping container concept, which would have seen repurposed bits of old freight cargo turned into ‘pods’, the idea has grown since then and now
In fact, they’re not far from being done, with the team currently predicting a November finish date. Here’s how it’s looking so far.
Credit: The Manc Group
Situated along a slice of the Bridgewater Canal, running along the length of the recognisable railway arches – 22 of them, to be precise – Embassy Village is set to become the first privately-funded homeless community not just in the UK but anywhere in Europe.
As far as the group behind this inspiring bit of philanthropy can tell in researching for this development, they haven’t found anything like this anywhere on the continent, certainly not on this scale.
Starting out as a repurposed luxury tour bus turned mobile rough sleeping shelter, they have since gone on to run three male and two women’s shelters, helping more than 175 individuals get back on their feet, from being rehomed to getting back into work and, ultimately, living independently.
Created by co-founder and director Sid Williams back in 2018, who has already helped countless vulnerable adults in and around Greater Manchester, there is a lot of faith behind this initiative, quite literally, in fact.
Sid and his wife Tess, who has also been helping spearhead Embassy‘s work here in the UK, are passionate Christians, but there’s no dogmatic or preachy vibes to be detected – at least as far as we could tell, anyway.
The ‘Village Hall’, where work, education and general life skills will be developed.Outdoor spaces are being carved out, including areas to relax, sports courtsand more.Suitable candidates in the shelter system will be selected in order to identify those who could manage resettlement. (Credit: The Manc)
Besides a nice ‘tithing’ idea, which sees 10% of all unrestricted funds from the village donated to relevant charities in the region and further afield, the only real Christian value being promoted here is ‘love thy neighbour’, and that’s the kind of ethos we can get behind regardless of creed.
You can see some of the old fashioned values in aspects such as the public hall seen above, where people will not only be encouraged to gather but learn, create, socialise and once again start to reintegrate into a proper community.
There’ll even be parts of the Embassy’s ‘resettlement team’ living on-site to help get people back on their feet, with at least one dedicated staff member assigned to every six residents.
As Sid put it in a spin on the well-trodden old proverb, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, he believes that sometimes, “it takes a city to raise a village.”
Those staying here will not be given a leg up back into the working world, providing inroads to full-time contracts and a proper wage, but they will also be encouraged to take up wellbeing activities, taken on trips and away days beyond the city limits and Greater Manchester full stop.
An example of the on-site staff’s living quarters.Each unit will have it own front door and all essential amenities.They have an approximate 92% success rate when it comes to rehoming and reintegrating residents, with many ultimately coming back to work for the organisation. Think of it as a ‘pay it forward’ spirit,
With dozens of local businesses contributing to the construction of Embassy Village, they’ve now managed to raise more than £5.2 million in funding.
As well as backing from developers Capital & Centric (led by Salford-born Tim Heatley) and the likes of regeneration specialist Peel L&P, who made the land available, there are several other organisations chipping in to help house upwards of 40 different individuals.
That being said, they are still roughly £400,000 short of their desired target, which will help them build every aspect of Embassy Village they’re hoping to make come to fruition, so further partnerships are obviously welcome.
Following an official update from Manchester City Council, we can also now confirm that the space will link up to the soon-to-be expanded Castlefield Viaduct, where three of four currently out-of-use tram lines will be turned into one long sky garden, similar to New York’s famous High Line.
The National Trust has announced that the @NTCastleDuct 'sky park' has received a whopping £2.75m funding towards a major extension. 🌿🏙
Following our tour of Embassy Village so far, there was one salient takeaway: there are a lot of people who really care about this cause working on this project.
Is it perfect? Maybe not? Would it be great if we could simply end Greater Manchester’s rough sleeping crisis by housing every rough sleeper in a traditional home, or one of the many new build properties in 0161? Of course it would, but we sadly all know it isn’t as simple as that.
Nevertheless, this current option is damn sight better than the alternative: allowing more and more people to end up on the streets, bouncing in and out of shelters, struggling with addiction, mental health and so on. They’re trying and they already have a proven track record spanning more than half a decade.
You can get a better idea of what it will look like when completed down below.
Explaining the ‘Poznań’ and why Oasis fans are doing it at their Live ’25 reunion tour gigs
Danny Jones
The sun is shining, Britpop is back on top and, more importantly, Oasis are BACK – plus, they’ve got thousands of people that aren’t even Manchester City fans doing the Poznań. Here’s why.
Before you jump down our throats, yes, we’re fully aware of what the popular Man City supporter celebration is (including the fact that it’s nicked); however, we have seen plenty of people confused over what it’s all about.
Including a few in our office who couldn’t give a monkey’s about football, which is fair enough.
So, if like lots of other non-footy-obsessed Oasis fans, you’ve also been wondering A) what the Poznań is and B) why people on the Live ’25 reunion tour have been doing it, here’s a brief explanation.
What is the Poznań celebration?
For starters, if you’ve been keeping off social media completely to avoid any spoilers whatsoever, first of all, well done, your willpower is much stronger than ours.
Secondly, if you’ve never seen it before at all, here’s what it looks like:
It came out of Poland, hailing from the place of the same name and popularised by Ekstraklasa (a.k.a. the Polish first division) football team, Lech Poznań, who have been doing it since the 1960s.
As you can see, the group – and in this case, stadium-wide celebration – sees supporters turning their backs on the pitch/the centre of the arena and linking by wrapping arms around each other’s shoulders and jumping up and down in one, massive, continuous wave.
It is quite a striking visual, no question about that.
Why are Oasis fans doing it?
Come on, you must have put two and two together by now.
Manchester City fans adopted this now iconic celebration more than a decade and a half ago, and have been doing it regularly during big games, big scorelines, and big trophy wins, of which there have been a lot since then.
In fact, aside from the Burnage boys being massive Blues, Liam Gallagher himself actually instructed the Cardiff crowds on nights one and two.
Gallagher brothers kick off Oasis world tour with Cardiff show, as Liam tells fans 'do the poznan'.
It’s actually said to originate from Turkey or Greece, where it is also fairly commonplace, being simply referred to as ‘la Grecque’.
They’ve even used some pretty biblical official photography from the opening weekend of the reunion tour as the cover art for a live recording re-released of ‘Slide Away’.
It might be the coolest album artwork we’ve seen in a while, to be honest.
The history of the Poznań and its connection to Man City
Be it at Wembley for a cup final or at the Etihad Stadium, where the majority of fans saw the supporter stunt for the first time, it’s become arguably even more synonymous with City than its creators.
It was 2010, and the blue half of Manchester was hosting Lech Poznań in the group stage of the Europa League, but despite a 3-1 victory on the grass itself, more eyes were fixed on the stands themselves.
An army of 6,000 loyal Lech Poznań fans travelled for the game and had the ground quite physically bouncing with a shade of slightly darker blue, so when Emmanuel Adebayor wrapped up a hat-trick, the home support decided to turn the jubilation on their opponents and do it themselves.
It was all in good spirit, of course, but it went down a pretty instant hit with City fans and has only grown more prevalent and regular ever since.
Perhaps one of the funniest sights in recent years is Noel Gallagher being too hungover to join in, which also led to one of the coldest-looking images of the songwriter ever, and one that was quickly dubbed a perfect album cover for the next High Flying Birds album or, who knows, maybe another Oasis record?…
Ok, this is still up there in the cover art competition too.
So, yeah: that’s pretty much the long and short of it, we just thought it would help if we quickly explained the Poznań to anyone wondering why Oasis fans have been doing it.
Basically, if it was that big over in Wales, don’t be surprised if you see a literal sea of people flood Heaton Park before turning their backs to the stage, which seems to be triggered once Liam introduces ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol.’ It’ll be interesting to see if Man United fans get involved.
And finally, just imagine how much more epic this is going to be back home in Manchester as we brace for quite possibly the biggest headline gig the region has ever seen…
The Manc -
11th June 2021 
