The Mill

1 week ago | manchestermill.co.uk | Jack Walton

“My physicality is very important to me,” Tameside councillor Allan Hopwood explains. Pastas, cereals, cakes (heaven forefend) do not sit well with him. They fog his mind, they slow him down. He needs to be svelte, to stay sharp, so he opts for a diet of meat, fish and veg. He loves salmon. But why does Hopwood need to stay so trim? It can’t be for all of that leafleting, can it? The answer, of course, is biking.

2 weeks ago | manchestermill.co.uk | Mollie Simpson

When the University of Greater Manchester announced a month ago that it was suspending three senior staff members, the national media focused on one name: George Holmes, who has been vice chancellor since 2005. The suspension of Holmes and two of his colleagues followed reporting by The Mill which uncovered evidence of financial corruption at the university and prompted an independent audit by the consultancy PwC.

3 weeks ago | manchestermill.co.uk | Mollie Simpson

In late April, one of Manchester’s most popular bars suddenly closed its doors. Sammy’s Bar, in the Northern Quarter, shut down because of a slew of online claims about predatory behaviour being made against its ever-present founder Sammy Shonn. Shonn, 42, has dismissed the stories about him as a smear campaign. But The Mill has now spoken to three separate women who say that Shonn sexually assaulted them, as well as one former staff member at the bar who says he groped her.

3 weeks ago | manchestermill.co.uk | Joshi Herrmann

Dear Millers – we were supposed to publish a big investigative piece today, but I've pushed it to tomorrow morning, a decision borne of pure sentimentality. That's what you can do when you run a media company – arbitrarily change the schedule so that you can write a personal editor's note to your readers to mark a big occasion.

1 month ago | manchestermill.co.uk | Mollie Simpson

The Mill has seen evidence that the owner of a popular bar in the Northern Quarter secretly filmed himself having sex with a female customer via the bar’s CCTV system. The woman says the video was taken without her consent, which could constitute a criminal offence. Sammy Shonn, the 42-year-old owner of Sammy’s Bar, later showed the video to the woman he had sex with, and sent her screenshots of the encounter, which she shared with us.