Over the past few weeks there’s been a spate of graffiti across Manchester and Salford, casting aspersions against various local businesses — crude tags calling Pollen Bakery “Homo-Phobic”, or claiming that The White Hotel “hate Palestine”.

One of our most popular stories of the year, @ophiraophira.bsky.social takes on the surprisingly sinister world of Manchester's tour guides. Warning: this story involves scheming, theft, impersonation, flag-snapping, people pushing each other off benches, false anecdotes about Oasis, and gimps.

Not long ago, I got a tip off from a reader who'd seen my piece about Manchester's warring tour guides. She told me of a similar battle going on between the burger vans outside Old Trafford - mostly run by women from Odsall: "salt of the earth... but you'd rather have them as friend than foe".

Leandra is one of the longest-serving women at the Old Trafford Burger vans. Her mum owned her van before her, and brought her to work since she was a baby.

Walk by Old Trafford on a match day evening and you’ll mostly see men eating burgers. But if you'd passed by a few hours earlier you’d have seen something different: local street traders, mostly women, staking their vans onto numbered pitches, heating vats of tea for the drawn-out night ahead...

Nice hommage to the 192 bus by @ophiraophira.bsky.social: The bus route that became a cornerstone of Mancunian life manchestermill.co.uk/192-manchest...

This is good from @manchestermill.bsky.social - even if Karney comes across as positively unhinged to the point of being a liability for the Council

3. Bit of a jarring shift in tone from the above, but Ophira Gottlieb's Mill piece about the Christmas-obsessed Councillor Pat Kearney is packed with perfect lines of writing. manchestermill.co.uk/big-wheel-pa...

Inside Manchester's tour guide turf wars.

If Bill Forsyth can be persuaded out of retirement for a sequel to COMFORT & JOY, then here's the pitch...

This may all seem innocent but, behind the scenes, the people in charge of showing other people around Manchester are engaged in a constant turf war, one of stolen customers, destroyed equipment, false reviews, and the occasional physical scrap. Read the full story by @ophiraophira.bsky.social here

Some of the most thoughtful social commentary atm is coming via @manchestermill.bsky.social manchestermill.co.uk/jews-and-mus...

After all the bluff and bluster of the last few days online, this is a personal and quietly moving piece on life in North Mancheter. More quality writing from @manchestermill.bsky.social

Once again @manchestermill.bsky.social gets to the heart of a thing. I found this moving but also thought @ophiraophira.bsky.social 's honesty about her response to another community's fear important too.

If you read one thing today, please make it this by @ophiraophira.bsky.social at @manchestermill.bsky.social. A moving, honest story about the Crumpsall terrorist attack and the long history of Jews and Muslims in North Manchester.

Another exceptional, thought-provoking piece of writing from #themanchestermill. This is exactly the kind of journalism we should be seeing after events like last week's heinous attack. manchestermill.co.uk/jews-and-mus...

More great writing via @manchestermill.bsky.social. Nuanced and personal piece on Jewish and Muslim lives in Cheetham Hill, by @ophiraophira.bsky.social manchestermill.co.uk/jews-and-mus...

Jews and Muslims in North Manchester: A personal story. Fantastic piece by @ophiraophira.bsky.social, who has covered the attack for @manchestermill.bsky.social like no other journalist. Read this alongside the other news coverage. manchestermill.co.uk/jews-and-mus...

The whole Mill team went to Crumpsall yesterday to meet the community affected by yesterday's attack. We spoke with them, and prayed with them - many of whom were so deep in prayer for Yom Kippur, they didn't even know that two people had been murdered just down the road.

Since many of you are distracted by other things or not following any Jewish media, you should know that today, on one of the holiest days of the year, a man drove his car into a crowd gathering to go into a Synagogue in Manchester then got out and started stabbing people. Two people are dead.

My colleague @ophiraophira.bsky.social got into a makeshift synagogue nearby and witnessed this amazing scene.

On ‘how to paint’ and keeping artists in Mcr & the north. Really love this idea, initiative and article from @manchestermill.bsky.social #apollopaintingschool manchestermill.co.uk/the-ardwick-...

How far would you go to get your child to pass the 11-Plus? For our weekend read, @ophiraophira.bsky.social went deep into the chaotic fight for places at Trafford's Grammar Schools - complete with backstabbing parents and extortionate tutors milking the system.

Biiig old conversation about grammar schools in Trafford - including some really meaningful stories - going on under this fantastic piece by @ophiraophira.bsky.social manchestermill.co.uk/backstabbing...

🧵Last February we published a piece about the Hotspur Press, in which we referred to the 200-year-old mill as a "famously flammable building" - a timber construction that had notable already caught fire twice in its lifetime.

Back in February, @ophiraophira.bsky.social wrote a big piece about the fight over the Hotspur Press. It opens with a story about a fire.. manchestermill.co.uk/some-say-the... @manchestermill.bsky.social

I went along to the Morrissey gig on Saturday to write a piece about the fans, the FANS, not Mozz himself

1/3 I went to meet Tasos Pattichis - The Chippy King of Bolton, owner of Olympus Fish and Chips - to talk about the changing face of his town. Our conversation, however, took an unexpected turn when he blamed the demise of Bolton's high street on an influx of refugees...

I went to meet the Hill family - a family of showmen in Bolton, who are divided on whether or not they should stay in the industrial park they've called home for 50 years. One member of the family seems particularly hell bent on strong-arming the council into giving them new land...

This is very good

@ophiraophira.bsky.social went to meet Bolton's fairground workers for our weekend read. Read it here!

Fantastic article today from @manchestermill.bsky.social about Manchester's early 90s hip hop scene. Loved the Killer album. Blew my mind as a teen to hear rappers with my accent. Weird that there's no mention of Buzz B though, for my money still the greatest rapper Britain has ever produced.

So according to this wonderful article I live in North Hulme. Never heard of it manchestermill.co.uk/ruthless-rap... @manchestermill.bsky.social

“For some reason, Manchester always seemed to fail when it came to black British people. It was a pattern. They’d get one chart record, and they’d disappear.” A Guy Called Gerald, The Ruthless Rap Assassins, and MC Tunes speak to @ophiraophira.bsky.social about Manchester's hip-hop heyday.

It was late August, just weeks before opening night, when the Royal Exchange realised their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was in trouble. “We’re in a chaotic tech [rehearsal],” one staff member told colleagues. “There are things we really need to talk about.” 🧵

Michael Browne is no stranger to making headlines. You may have heard of him back when he painted a scaled-down version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in a Whitworth Street restaurant — or a few years later when he depicted Eric Cantona as a resurrected Roman.

When three different readers got in touch to tell us that something strange was going on at The Hotspur Press, we knew it was worth looking into. ‘Weird lying developer ads’ read the subject line of one of the emails. ‘To list or not to list?’ went another.

Four days ago we published an article about Joseph Wheeler - the @boltonuni.bsky.social marketing man who was accused of making racist remarks and threatening to sack people if they didn’t bend to his will. Today, Wheeler got himself sacked from the university following our report.

Enjoyable and rambling is exactly how my editor described this one too!

Been waiting for this one for what feels like years. Luckily @ophiraophira.bsky.social on Glasgow ‘riddy culture’ did not disappoint.

🚨🚨🚨 Manchester event promoters, venues, establishments, etc! I compile our twice-weekly event recommendation lists, that get sent out to over 50k subscribers across Greater Manchester. If you'd like your event to be featured in the future, DM me the details or send an email to [email protected]

Great, thorough piece on the Oldham grooming panic by @joshiherrmann.bsky.social. Not just saying that cause he's my boss. I think this quote (about Conservative Councillor Lewis Quigg) tells you a lot of what you need to know.

Lindsay Reade. Gillian Gilbert. Ang Matthews. Cath Carroll. DJ Paulette. Stella Hall. Linder Sterling. Kay Carroll. So many brilliant women played a pivotal role in Factory’s story. Thanks for acknowledging & amplifying some of their voices @ophiraophira.bsky.social @manchestermill.bsky.social

This. The whole Manchester story is immensely male-dominated in its narrative and yet so many women powered it.

Another great piece from @manchestermill.bsky.social ...

"The question is not one of whether women were involved in the label’s success, but rather why it’s taken just under half a century for their involvement to be recognised." @ophiraophira.bsky.social on the forgotten women of Factory, for today's weekend read. manchestermill.co.uk/p/she-helped...

Lindsay Reade played a huge role in Manchester's music scene - She helped start Factory Records, managed The Stone Roses, and discovered Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - so why is it that she's only remembered as Tony Wilson's ex-wife?