Another excuse for new note paper

What happened to "Bolton - altogether better" did it die a death?

So another set of expensively hired spin doctors are wheeled in to spruce up the image a bit. Another £90,000 of council tax payers' money, plus the cost of changing all of the highway signs, repainting vehicles and scrapping the old headed notepaper, goes down the tubes.

"Just one big happy family" - the mind boggles.

Ignore for a minute the notion that, at times, the family can be the most oppressive and stifling form of social institution - just like having your own little civil war, and you don't even have to go out of the house for it.

Will this solve the shopping disaster that is Newport Street/Great Moor Street - lots of charity shops. Will this restore the desert that is Manchester Road - all car showrooms and deserted filling stations.

"Got the builders in". How insufferably twee - but if having the builders in gives us architectural monstrosities like the Kensington Place flats and New Marsden House, then as far as I am concerned you can keep the builders out.

"Just one big happy family". Do the promoters of this twaddle not understand that a significant proportion of people in the outlying parishes have yet to forgive Big Brother Bolton for raiding the larder at the time of local government reorganisation in 1973 - a long time ago, and not true or fair, but that is how many of them still see things.

Will a nice new typeface on the headed notepaper, rainbow paint and a nice touchy feely message to put on the roadsigns, create so much as a single job?

Well, maybe the odd bureaucrat, and the bods who replace the road signs, will be kept in gainful employment for a while longer, but I am not convinced that anything else will change. And if they want a defining characteristic to put on the highway signs, to emphasise Bolton's pride in itself, how about "part of historic Lancashire"!

Peter Johnston

Kendal Road

Bolton