There are several issues with the Manchester site
The first is that according to claims made on here in the past, the supposed owner/admin hijacked the site and stole it back after he'd sold it to one of the members here.
During that alleged hijack the forum was seemingly moved to a different server and many of the user accounts were lost in the process.
Some were able to regain their accounts through the help of a member here acting as intermediary, but since then the user database seems to have been reverted at least twice - it seems to fail and then get restored from an ancient backup.
I can't log into it any more, and attempts at creating new accounts have failed, is some cases because the authentication e-mail never arrives, in other cases because it contains an invalid link.
Only way of restoring lost accounts on there now is if someone on here who still has a valid account there acted as intermediary and contacted the admins with a list of user accounts. Unfortunately the member who did it last time can't do it now.
The truth re the legal status of the site in uncertain, all we know is what was reported on here.
As to its use, last time I logged on the only few other users were the Manchester pimps posting adverts