ONCE again the spectre of the old pre-1974 Lancashire is resurrected!

The Letters page still has people winging about Bolton "going back to Lancashire", etc. Surely it's time this subject was allowed to bury its dead.

Whether we like it or not, Bolton is in Greater Manchester and is likely to be so for ever more. So why don't we accept it and take off the rose-tinted spectacles of days of old.

On a bigger scale, places such as Wolverhampton were taken out of Staffordshire and placed into West Midlands. Middlesbrough was cut out of Yorkshire and placed into Cleveland/Teeside. But we never hear of them constantly harping on about it. They just get on with being Wolverhampton or Middlesbrough.

Likewise, we should get on with being Bolton. We have never needed Lancashire as a prop, as we are a big enough town to be known by name only throughout England.

Alan Smith

Presto Street

Bolton