Stephen F O'Connor

[ben rose @benrose1976]

So how did a property adviser end up posting about Andy Burnham and Abu Dhabi?

All we wanted was a planning permission.

It took Manchester City Council over nine years to give us one. In that time Renaker put up about a dozen towers, seven of them around our site.

My client has owned a site on Great Jackson Street in Manchester for 40 years. In October 2017 we started work on planning for 1,037 flats there. We are Manchester born and bred. Friends in London warned us that development in Manchester was "the Wild West". We didn't know how right they were.

We were told we had to provide £28.8m of affordable housing. So we asked what Renaker's Deansgate Square next door had paid. The answer:- Nothing. Zero. Nada. Zip. 1,508 flats and no section 106 agreement at all. Nobody at Manchester City Council could explain why. On four Renaker schemes MCC has "lost" the viability files.

We were told we had to pay just over £1m as an upfront payment. Exactly £1,000 per flat. Across 20 Renaker towers and 8,543 homes, Manchester City Council took just £487,000. That is £57 a home.

So we kept looking. We found £598m of public loans from Andy Burnham's GMCA to Renaker. Add in the other public sources and it is £868m, to companies controlled by one man. None of these loans were ever publicised and the loan terms remain almost entirely hidden.

It took nearly four years just to get to the planning committee. Over nine years on, nothing is built.

We then asked MCC for permission to knock down our own empty warehouses. It refused, giving ten flimsy reasons. So off to court we went. In January 2026 a High Court judge rejected all ten and held that MCC had "acted unreasonably". That case cost MCC over £200,000 of public money. And for what?

My client also owns the main Royal Mail depot on Oldham Road. MCC has since told us that land sits inside its joint venture with Far East Consortium. It has kept over a third of that agreement hidden, including the plan, and won't show it to us. Why?

So we carried on asking questions.

Then they blocked my emails.

We never set out to investigate anyone. We asked one question, got no answer, and kept digging.

We still are.

#ProjectCleanCity
@SianReform @NathanEvansTeam @JoshHalliday @rbrooks45 @DeclanGCarey @jackdulhanty

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@GregScottTV I might offer a cheeky £7m.

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

I loved it! I actually like the director and Tom Cruise. The film is one of the most intelligent takes on the environment that I have seen. I was just poking fun at the article. A more interesting article would be why the film and media system decided to bomb this film from the very beginning.

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@RogueUnfiltered Where was his carer?

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@tomhfh 16 regions in Poland are now wealthier than a typical UK region. Social benefits and paying people not to work aren't much of a thing in Poland.

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@szilagyipal The EU strategy on energy, defense, and food shows it is unfit for purpose.

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@JohnCleese This generation's George Orwell 😄

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

On Thursday I wrote about the 2014 injunction Russell Brand obtained against a woman who accused him of assault.

I've now obtained the final order. It's breathtaking.

She had no lawyer. No trial. Yet she was silenced for life - even barred from speaking to the police.

🧵:

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@SamaHoole Insulin lock is a modern idea not from the original study but ties in well with it. Ideally, the experiment needs a longer period than around one week for meaningful data. Interesting stuff though, thank you.

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@BDSixsmith Maybe he can appeal 🙄

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@UtahFlatRanger Or don’t

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@PetronellaWyatt Splendid

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@OscarGreta1846

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@CliveWismayer @danwootton It’s rebranding as a Zionist EU supporting global news hub with AI news. It’s doing a Nike Jaguar mash up!

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@CharlotteCGill It's the new Jaguar and Nike special marketing campaign again.

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@TerraOrBust They're sacking people to replace them with Zionist and EU-supporting AI bots! People will love that 😅

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@LozzaFox @Telegraph Subscription cancelled

[Stephen F O'Connor @StephenFOConnor]

@andrewc44104127 That’s not just any sandwich, it’s an M&S knuckle sandwich!

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

Q2 was an amazing quarter, with our AI investments redefining what’s possible across every part of our business.

Alphabet revenue grew 24% YoY and Google Cloud accelerated to 82% growth. We saw exciting momentum across the board from Search to YouTube to the Gemini app (which reached 950M monthly active users). Our model APIs are processing 22B tokens/min (up from 16B+ last quarter) driven by our workhorse Flash models. We’re also seeing great adoption of Gemini Enterprise, used by 90% of the Fortune 100, as well as strong demand for our security solutions.

Outstanding results and momentum, and such an exciting moment—thanks to all of our partners and employees around the world! 🙌 About to hop on the call!