MR Smith (Bolton Evening News, August 10) seems to confuse administrative arrangements with identity.
The present area administered by the county council does not define "Lancashire", any more than the old one did. The LCC never administered Bolton, which was a county borough.
Did that make Boltonians less Lancastrian? Of course not.
There are two aspects to the problem of "Greater Manchester". The first is illustrated by Mr Smith's claim that we are "attached to Manchester".
This is not the case, either geographically or in administrative terms. Manchester is just another district, albeit with a larger population (though not that much larger these days); its council has no more powers than Bolton has. We are alone among the Metropolitan counties in taking the name of the largest constituent - even though Birmingham represents a far larger proportion of the population of West Midlands than Manchester does of "Greater Manchester". Coventry people do not get called Brummies, and I should not like to suggest to a Sunderlander that he comes from Newcastle!
This matters, because it suggests we are a peripheral fringe, whereas, in truly regional terms, we are pretty central. Far from suggesting modernity and progress, the ethos of "Greater Manchester" is suburban, and its agenda suburbanist.
Secondly, the real, multi-centred conurbation of which we are part stretches from the Wirral to Oldham. This was always what people meant by south Lancashire, nowadays often referred to as the Mersey Belt. If we are to have regional government, it needs to address this reality. We cannot go on creating quangos like the GM "Strategic" Health Authority, which are anything but. Manchester is a vital part of the region's life, but this is not the South-east: it is not the only focus, and never was.
Why are there no evening buses between Leigh and Newton, only six miles apart? Why are there now no services at all to Liverpool? Why would the GMPTE not even consider trams in the Bolton area? Why is the Bolton-Leigh-M6 link unfinished, when the whole stretch from Chequerbent to Winwick would have come under the LCC pre-1974?
The answer, Mr Smith, is the distortion of "Greater Manchester".
Andrew Bowyer
Fallowfield Way
Atherton
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