A dismembered torso sparks a grisly investigation in Salford

Dear readers — GMP officers have descended on a nature reserve in Salford after a member of the public discovered a dismembered torso wrapped in plastic. The identity of the victim is still unknown, but a man in his 20s has been arrested on suspicion of murder. We bring you the latest in today’s briefing.

There’s also a roundup of Andy Burnham’s manifesto promises going into next month's mayoral election, a look at the Greater Manchester MP at the centre of a sexting scandal, and figures from a new survey that has found the North West to be the vaping capital of the UK. Make mine a watermelon breeze.

We had a pretty busy weekend, sending out two stories back-to-back. The first was an evocative piece about the Star and Garter on Fairfield Street, following the death of its influential founder Andy Martin. It got a big response on Twitter, with one person describing it as “another stunningly good piece of original journalism”. 

Then, we published an incisive report by Mollie, looking at the meltdown at arts venue HOME after it pulled an event featuring Palestinian author Atef Abu Saif, who members of Greater Manchester’s Jewish community accused of antisemitism and even Holocaust denial. The writer and his publisher have strongly denied the claims. The event, Voices of Resistance, was eventually reinstated after protests by artists and widespread uproar on social media. Mollie got inside the meetings and negotiations, some secretly recorded, to understand what forced one of the city’s biggest cultural hubs into a screeching U-turn.

UK's biggest podcasting party comes to Sheffield

From today's sponsor: A brand spanking new podcast festival, Crossed Wires, has landed on the other side of the Pennines. Join the biggest names in podcasting, including Adam Buxton, Katherine Ryan and Jon Ronson, to see some of your favourite shows LIVE! The festival is being organised by Alice Levine (My Dad Wrote a Porno), Dino Sofos (The News Agents) and James O’Hara (Tramlines festival). There will be music from Self Esteem, surprise special guests and a programme of free Fringe events. Just an hour's train ride across the stunning Peak District, the festival is being held in Sheffield's recently transformed city centre, packed with independent bars and restaurants.

The Crossed Wires podcast festival is running from 31 May to 2 June — find more details and buy tickets to your favourite shows here.

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⛅️ This week’s weather

Our local weatherman Martin Miles says to enjoy this week’s sunny weather — we might be in for a cold snap early next week.

Tuesday 🌦️ Feeling cold with strong winds and heavy spells of rain. 10°C.

Wednesday 🌧️ Dry and mild at first but turning wet and breezy in the afternoon. 14°C.

Thursday ⛅️ Hazy sunny spells and feeling much warmer. 18°C.

Friday ⛅️ Breezy but warm, with bright spells and a small chance of a showers. 19°C.

Weekend 🌦️ Mostly dry and relatively warm at first but turning more changeable and colder from Sunday.

You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.

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We’d be so grateful if you could give five minutes to fill it in — the link is here.

The big story: A dismembered torso sparks a grisly investigation in Salford

Top line: On Thursday, a man’s torso was found wrapped in plastic in Kersal Dale Nature Reserve in Salford. The torso, thought to belong to a victim over the age of 40, had been left in the nature reserve for a “matter of days” before being discovered. A man in his 20s was arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday.

Context: The torso was first discovered by a member of the public, who contacted police describing an “unknown item” wrapped in plastic and secluded in the woodland. The torso had no identifying marks, and the victim’s identity remains unknown.

• Specialist officers, dogs and underwater teams are “combing through every inch” of the surrounding area, but haven’t found further body parts or evidence. 

• The reserve covers 32 hectares, and police say they will be in the area “for some time”. It remains closed to the public.

The arrest made on Saturday is “an important step for our investigation,” Chief Superintendent Tony Creely told reporters yesterday. “But we must keep an open mind and a big part of this is speaking to anyone who may have crucial information.”

Creely and the force say the main focus right now is identifying the victim and supporting their family. GMP is “using all forensic techniques available to identify him as soon as we can so we are able to support his loved ones during this devastating time."

Latest: The murder suspect remains in custody and was questioned by detectives yesterday. GMP are appealing for any new information that could help them identify the victim. “I cannot stress the importance of people contacting us with information if they know anything at all,” Creely said. “You may have information that you don’t feel is of importance, but it could be to us. Please pass it on.” (If you do know anything, you can get in touch here).

Update: Since publishing this story, we have been told the man in his 20s, arrested on suspicion of murder, has been released on bail.

Your Mill briefing

🗳 Dozens of politicians and journalists gathered for the launch of Andy Burnham’s mayoral campaign last Wednesday, which outlined his ambitions for a potential third term. Burnham’s speech covered some familiar ground — the government working against us, the promise that “there is a better way than the Whitehall way” — and his campaign video featured plenty of yellow buses. Paul Dennett, the directly-elected mayor of Salford, introduced Burnham and said: “Andy, along with nine other council leaders including myself, have been able to make real changes.” 

So what were those changes? We heard about:

• Recruiting 1,600 new police officers (to a force that has been decimated since 2010, with 10,000 jobs cut).

• Pledging to continue to drive up standards in housing and hold landlords to account through the Good Landlords Charter.

And in his third term, he’d like to:

• Introduce “hopper” fares on the Bee Network, so passengers can pay £2 for a single ticket and get unlimited travel around the city region for an hour.

• Expand Metrolink to Stockport, Middleton, Heywood and Bolton.

• Introduce a “Manchester baccalaureat” that will give students who don’t want to go to university the opportunity to take different career paths.

📱 William Wragg, the MP for Hazel Grove and deputy chair of the influential 1922 committee of backbenchers, has apologised after getting himself and multiple fellow MPs embroiled in a sexting scandal. Wragg sent intimate pictures of himself to someone on Grindr, who then blackmailed him into sharing the phone numbers of several MPs, political advisors and journalists. “I’ve hurt people by being weak. I was scared. I’m mortified,” Wragg said. “I’m so sorry that my weakness has caused other people hurt.” While many have expressed sympathy, others — including London Mayor Sadiq Khan — have urged Wragg to resign.

🚨 A 17-year-old boy was murdered in Moss Side last Thursday. Prince Walker-Ayeni, who would have turned 18 tomorrow, was stabbed in what police are describing as a “targeted” attack. No arrests have been made. There was a vigil for Walker-Ayen on Saturday. 84Youth, which supports young people who have experienced violent crime in Moss Side, described the “raw pain, confusion, heartbreak in the tears shown by some young men and women [...] seen many times over in previous generations.”

💨 If you’ve noticed that your world increasingly smells of mango, strawberry, and other fruity flavours, then the North West being crowned the vaping capital of the UK may not come as a surprise. A study by e-cig retailer Go Smoke Free used Companies House data to find the ratio of vape shops to residents around the region. Blackburn topped the list with 22.5 shops per 100,000 residents; Bolton and Manchester came second and third respectively.

Home of the week

This three-bedroom house was built in 1860 and converted in the mid-20th century. It has French doors opening up to a private garden and sits within a quiet, leafy part of Fallowfield. £500,000.

Our favourite reads

The Manchester ‘tsar’ who danced with gangsters and Gallaghers — The Telegraph

Sacha Lord, “always smartly dressed and with hair so severely parted, it looks as though he opted for a comb-­over without the inconvenience of first going bald”, releases his first book, Tales of the Dancefloor, this Thursday. This review interrogates his image as an “innovator” — “Lord’s success has always rested on other people’s ideas,” writes the critic Nicholas Blincoe — and asks whether the book might function as “a launch pad to a political career”. 

An English Village Hollowed Out for a Train That May Never Come — The New York Times

When Rishi Sunak cut the remaining northern section of the HS2 line, abandoning a high-speed connection between Manchester and Birmingham, it raised “urgent and unanswered questions” about Whitmore, a village in the Midlands in the path of HS2. Many houses in the area were sold to a government-financed company responsible for developing HS2, now lying empty and abandoned. 

The Call of the Weird — The London Review of Books

A new book about religion and madness studies the “parallel responses” of different societies when encountering those who said they had been in touch with the supernatural. “Mary Lavery, who saw the Virgin Mary outside a Manchester railway station in 1892, ended up in Prestwich asylum — but in ultramontane France, she might have emulated Bernadette Soubirous and become a saint.”

Our to do list

Tuesday

🇪🇸 HOME is showing Chinas, a film portraying the experiences of three nine-year-old Chinese girls settling in working-class Madrid, as part of ¡Viva! Festival, a month-long celebration of the best Spanish and Latin American documentary and film over the last three decades. View the full programme and get tickets here.

🌻 Summery, indie-soul singer Yellow Days is performing at Band on the Wall, get tickets here.

Wednesday

📚 The Working Class Movement Library is hosting a discussion of the works of historian Raphael Samuel, who believed in the importance of not overlooking the stories of ordinary lives. It’s free to attend.

🍻 The Millstone is hosting an evening of drinks and socialising to fundraise for St Ann’s Little Hulton Hospice. The event is organised by John Arden, in honour of his daughter Steph Jenkins, who died of cancer ten years ago when she was just 36. Donate here and head to The Millstone from 6pm for a pint in Steph’s honour.

Thursday 

🎨 The Whitworth is showing a new exhibition by the postwar textile artist Shirley Craven, whose bold, abstract work drew inspiration from the rural Yorkshire countryside and the Jurassic coastline. More here.

🎭 The Rug of Identity, a queer-comedy first performed in 1986, has been revived for the modern stage and is showing at the King’s Arms in Salford all week. Tickets here.