The Mancunian Way: The war on chewing gum

Keep up to date with all the big stories from across Greater Manchester in the daily Mancunian Way newsletter. You can receive the newsletter direct to your inbox every weekday by signing up right here.

Yesterday we heard of plans to end the scourge of wobbly paving stones. Today hostilities have been cranked up a notch, with a war on chewing gum declared.

After the Christmas shopping rush, it emerged the pavements on Market Street are covered in grubby old ‘chuddy’. City centre spokesperson Pat Karney said the street was in the ‘worst state’ he’d ever seen.

"Why they don't put it in the bin, I've no idea,” Coun Karney told the Manchester Evening News. “They're letting Manchester down, they're letting themselves down.

"Why would you make our city centre such a scruffy place where you have to walk in other people's chewing gum? There must be about six or seven bins on Market Street."

Last winter, Peter Street was labelled 'Chewing Gum Street', with the pavement outside some of Manchester's most popular bars covered in the stuff - despite the best efforts of those businesses in trying to remove it.

But it’s no small job to clean it up. The town hall already spends £100,000 a year cleaning up the city's streets, while more is spent by business improvement district CityCo, and a further £140,000 will be spent across the borough in 2023-24.

When two-year-old Awaab Ishak died in a damp and mouldy flat, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing bosses promised things would change. But three years later, tenants claim they are dealing with just as many problems as they were back then.

In the packed back room of a town centre pub exasperated householders gathered to air their fears and frustrations. Lisa Smith, who helped to organise the