25 YEARS AGO

BOLTON District ratepayers will have to pay 50 per cent more for the services that Great Manchester has taken over, 27 per cent more for services performed by the new district, 70 per cent more for sewerage and the water rate has gone up by 32 per cent. The object of local government re-organisation was to bring greater co-ordination to administration in this area - but at what price? The answer seems to be at a price of greatly increased rates. In Bolton District, the rate rises range from 32 per cent in Farnworth to 45.7 per cent in Blackrod.

50 YEARS AGO

A MOST laudable attempt by the Bolton Corporation to protect the health of its townspeople by the establishment of a smokeless zone has been thwarted by the British Electricity Authority. In future, no local authority planning a reform of this nature will be secure against the attack of the BEA, which has made up its mind to invade smokeless zones wherever it believes it ought to invade them. Of course, the Authority will be bound to serve notice on the Corporation if and when it wants to build a new power station, and the Corporation will be able to object. But smokeless zones will be a secondary consideration in any decision.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, March 25, 1874

ALL England has not yet, it appears, given up belief in the Black Arts. We are a very enlightened and an eminently practical people, and have made wonderful progress; but the Press, the Railways, the Telegraph, and all other Educational facilities of our age notwithstanding, there are English people to be found who have faith in 'charms' and 'spells', and in the power of impostors to afflict them with, or deliver them from, 'the ills that flesh is heir to', by supernatural means. In these days of schools, newspapers, and innumerable other agencies for exposing superstition, these notions appear extremely absurd, but they are not wholly eradicated.

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