The Mancunian Way: A town divided

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Abel Nigussie says he was ‘lucky’. It’s perhaps not a word everyone would use to describe his situation. The 24-year-old crossed the Channel in a small boat in the middle of the night.

He says he was crammed in with '80 or 90' others making the treacherous journey in the hope of starting a new life. Now, just a fortnight later, he's living in the Cresta Court Hotel on the outskirts of Altrincham town centre. "I was lucky," he says as he sits on a picnic bench in the car park. "I have no money [to pay to cross the Channel] but some people tell me how to hide on the boat. "I tried four or five times, everybody running, eventually I hide myself.

There were 80 plus people on the boat. Many, many people. The journey took eight hours. It was dark, the waves were very high.

It was very, very hard." Abel, who is originally from Eritrea in east Africa, is one of around 300 male asylum seekers being put up at Cresta Court, which last week suddenly cancelled booking and meetings to clear the rooms for the newcomers.