Show Notes
Last Thursday, The Mill revealed that Primary Security, a company controlled by Sacha Lord, had obtained more than £400,000 of public money from an Arts Council scheme that was supposed to support culturally significant organisations during the pandemic. Our story presented evidence that the application was deeply misleading and that Sacha Lord’s company Primary Security had recently changed its name to Primary Events.
Fast forward to 5.04pm on Friday, and an expensive law firm in the capital sent a letter threatening to sue The Mill. Our story was defamatory, the letter said, and “factually wrong”. We had until 4pm on Tuesday to publish an apology and take down the story. Instead of complying with this deadline, we dug deeper. After we discovered new details, the Arts Council and the GMCA launched an investigation into the funding application, and as of yesterday evening, Sacha Lord has now withdrawn his legal threat against The Mill. In a lengthu public statement, which you can read in full here, Lord denies all of the allegations.
In this special episode of The Manchester Weekly from Mill, Joshi Herrmann and Jack Dulhanty take you behind the scenes of our reporting and we sit down with the original source for the story, Mark Turnbull, the former director of Primary Security. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from The Run of The Mill
Hello and welcome back to Run of The Mill! This week, Jack is joined by new staff writer Alec Herron to discuss his latest piece about the history of the iconic CIS Tower, Manchester's first skyscraper. For the story Alec spoke to the former staff members of Co-operative Insurance, which inhabited the building for decades. They described a kind of vertical village, with a free canteen in the basement, a disco room, bowling alleys, saunas, a plush executive lounge, high-end restaurant and observation deck. Kind of utopian, also kind of Severance. Enjoy!
Welcome back to Run of the Mill! In this week's episode, Jack is joined by our newest staffer Ethan Penny, who has spend the week at Labour Conference in Liverpool watching Andy Burnham's enchanting hold over the national Labour Party in action. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to Run of The Mill! This week Jack and Ophira cover the holy trinity of the Manchester streetscape: cig butts, hire bikes and corn sellers. Plus: we call on you, the listeners, to send in your top alternate routes for when you're trying to avoid whatever bits Manchester City Centre you like least.
Jack and Ophira have been walking around Manchester asking people how much they earn. In today's episode, they talk money, the conclusion of the Mill impostor saga, seeing Gary Neville in the flesh, and applying for a job as Burnham's new No.10 North media adviser. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome back to the Run of The Mill! All sorts has been going on: a Mill-imposter has been trying to make Reddit think we're investigating people we aren't; we noticed Peppa Pig put the Factory Records logo on a medal and demand to know why, we look at how Greater Manchester's most scandalous council got control of the UK's biggest public pension fund and ask if Manchester's padel boom is on the verge of going bust. Ophira and Jack are on the mics, and if you want to read their and the rest of the team's work, go to: manchestermill.co.uk.