Mr Pendle: West Bank twinning is a waste of time

THE controversial decision by Pendle Council to twin the borough with the Palestinian settlement of Beit Leed just before Christmas has certainly upset some people, if the contents of our letters pages this morning are anything to go by.

By contrast, there does not appear to be a great degree of public support for the move.

But regardless of the political motivation behind the decision – and the voting in the debate, with Labour and Lib-Dem members all voting in favour and Conservative and BNP unanimously voting against, shows just how motivated it was – there are several important questions which Mr Pendle, who had the dubious pleasure of sitting through the debate on the matter, would like some clarification on.

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Could someone tell him exactly what benefits he and the people of Pendle will get from the council “showing solidarity with the Palestinian population”, to quote the motion agreed by councillors?

How many people in Pendle had even heard of Beit Leed before we reported on the planned links?

Should people in Pendle not have been asked what they felt about this momentous matter before it was left to just over 40 councillors to decide for us?

Who will be the select handful of people who will travelling to the Middle East for twinning junkets in the future?

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Have the people in Beit Leed – the ordinary people, that is, and not the handful of Palestinian counterparts of those in Pendle such as Richard MacSween, one of the leading lights in the twinning campaign – been asked for their thoughts on their new twinning links, or have they simply had them foisted on them without consultation, as has happened to us here in Pendle?

Have they actually any idea where Pendle is?

What do they know about our borough, its rich history, its culture and its wide and diverse range of people?

On that last one, Mr Pendle would suggest the vast majority of people in Beit Leed do not know anything about us and probably aren’t that bothered about us either.

And for those reasons alone, he feels this twinning will not make a scrap of difference to the lives of the ordinary Pendle citizen and is therefore a complete waste of time.

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• According to a recent national newspaper report, climate change is just a load of hot air.

The surface of the earth is not getting significantly hotter, and there are no signs it will do so in the next five years.

Without wishing to fan the flames of the argument which filled our letters columns for weeks in the second half of last year, doesn’t this confirm what Mr Pendle has said all along:

Our weather patterns are, and always have been, purely cyclical?