Passengers travelling between 2 railway stations in Greater Manchester and buying tickets on the day will be offered just 2 simple options:

• Anytime – Single or Return

• Off-Peak – Single or Return

Key points

• The tickets are valid across all train operators serving Greater Manchester

• It’s simpler and fairer, removing confusing operator-specific fares

• All 96 stations in Greater Manchester are included

• They are available online, at ticket vending machines and in ticket offices

• Singles and Returns are available for both types, and Singles are half the cost of a Return

• Advance tickets purchased before the day of travel and Season Tickets remain available

• Railcard discounts, Duo, and Ranger and Rover products are unchanged

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/25693507

A corner of south Manchester with ‘immense’ wildlife has been declared a nature reserve.

Manchester council formally earmarked a section of Southern Cemetery, the largest municipal graveyard in the UK, as a local nature reserve on Friday (March 14). It’s the tenth council reserve to be announced, with the last designation taking place in March 2023.

However, councillors have designated an area which is ‘away from active burial sites’. The 28-hectare plot in Chorlton is already home to bats, owls, birds, bees, and butterflies.

Deputy council leader Joanna Midgeley, who represents the Chorlton Park ward for Labour, said the ‘wildlife is immense’.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24454081

The owners of a pub have been left baffled after finding an unopened can of beer in the roof - dating back more than 30 years.

The tin of Joseph Holt bitter was discovered in the ceiling during a major refurbishment of the pub in Greater Manchester.

The beer is no longer available in cans, only on draught or in mini kegs, and has not been for more than three decades.

It is now being preserved as a piece of history in a display cabinet behind the bar at the Starkey Arms on Manchester Road, Heywood.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/23987579

A second Labour MP has been suspended from the party for comments made in a WhatsApp group.

The Labour Party confirmed Oliver Ryan has had the whip removed, meaning he will now sit as an independent MP in the Commons.

The 29-year-old Burnley MP apologised on Sunday and said he "deeply regrets" the comments he made, which a government source said were "unacceptable and deeply disappointing".

According to the Daily Mail, Mr Ryan joked about a fellow Labour MP being gay.

...

Meanwhile, three Labour councillors caught up in the scandal have "stepped away" from their duties on Tameside Council.

Councillors Jack Naylor, Claire Reid, and George Newton - who were members of the WhatsApp group - are also being investigated by the Labour Party.

...

Mr Gwynne is the latest MP to lose his position on the frontbench after ex-treasury minister Tulip Siddiq quit last month and Louise Haigh resigned as transport minister in November.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/23809598

A man who was caught with his pants down in a sauna claimed to have been 'warming up his chicken', a court has heard. Xin Zhang had been for a swim at a university leisure centre when a woman noticed him staring at her from the sauna.

The 59-year-old had shorts 'down to his knees' and was touching himself at the time, it is claimed. Prosecutors said he had become 'aroused' by the feeling of the pool jets on his bottom.

...

He said Zhang had 'done some weird stuff previously' including 'pulling his shorts down' near 'air vents at the side of the pool' but that management had said previously they 'didn't have enough evidence to pull him in and to talk to him about it.'

...

A member of management who spoke to him told the court that when he asked Zhang about what he was doing he said 'my chicken' and 'gestured with his hands.' He said he took that to mean that he was 'adjusting himself.'

Zhang, of Foundry Lane in Manchester, told police that 'chicken is what I call my genitals.' He told officers in his interview: "I was adjusting the inner layer of my shorts, because of my eczema I have them loose.'

In his basis of plea given at court, Zhang said he was 'warming' his privates as he was cold. He 'denied he was masturbating but conceded it may have looked like that for anyone watching,' the court was told.

Giving evidence himself, he said that he lay down in the sauna as he was 'cold, tired and hungry.' Speaking through a Mandarin interpreter, he claimed it was customers who set the temperature in the sauna.

He said: "I sat there for about seven or eight minutes and I still felt cold. "I realised my waistband had been tied too tight and I loosened my waistband."

He said after looking at his privates, he feared that 'there might be some kind of illness causing a problem.' "I was trying to warm it up" he said before he heard 'knocking on the windows.'

A survivor of the Manchester Arena attack is calling for greater legal protections from conspiracy theorists after a YouTuber with millions of viewers secretly filmed his family to try to prove they were “crisis actors”.

Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve, now 22, were left with life-changing injuries by the blast, which killed 22 people and wounded hundreds more at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.

They were the closest people to the suicide bomber to survive but Eve suffered a severe brain injury and Hibbert, 48, was paralysed when his spinal cord was severed by shrapnel.

The father and daughter were awarded £45,000 in damages in October after suing a former TV producer turned conspiracy theorist who claimed in online films that the attack was staged.

In videos viewed tens of thousands of times, Richard Hall described the Arena bomb as a “well-organised and well-planned fake terrorist incident involving over 100 enlisted participants or actors” and that it involved “fabricated deaths”.

Hall, a former engineer and TV producer, had also spread conspiracy theories about the murders of Jo Cox and Jill Dando, the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack, the Salisbury poisonings and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

His YouTube channel, which was shut down in October 2022, had 84,000 followers and his videos had more than 16m views, the high court in London was told this year.

The judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, condemned Hall’s conduct as “oppressive, unacceptable and of sufficient gravity to sustain criminal liability” after hearing how the YouTuber had covertly filmed Eve and her mother in September 2019 after tracking down the teenager in an effort to try to prove she was a “crisis actor”.