MR PENDLE: We’ve no need for an elected Mayor

the subject of a locally elected mayor has reared its ugly head once again, with Pendle Council having been forced to change its arrangements and consider whether or not to have one.

Thankfully, members shied away from running the risk of having a power-crazed megalomaniac being at the reins of town hall affairs and telling them what to do, deciding they were quite capable of looking after things themselves and do the job they were elected for.

Just how little interest there is in the matter was shown in a Pendle Council report just before Christmas which gave the results of a public consultation carried out earlier in the year.

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Rather than the droves of people expressing their support for an elected mayor the Government had hoped for, the council received just seven replies.

Of these, five came from parish and town councils and two from members of the public, and not one of them supporting an elected mayor.

And looking at how elected mayors have fared in other parts of the country, it is perhaps as well.

Do we really want to see a Government team sent to Pendle to sort the kind of chaos that has ensued in Doncaster, where the council and mayor have fallen out?

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Do we need an elected mayor at all, steering the good ship Pendle on to the rocks?

Mr Pendle certainly does not.

The council has said it does not.

And the people have shown they are not interested either.

Surely it is time to put the matter to bed - once and for all.

INSURANCE company Confused.com - the one with the annoying advert featuring the Queen classic “Somebody to Love” - has come up with an outlandish piece of tosh.

It has carried out research on the house numbers of insurance claimants - and found which are supposedly the unluckiest.

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And having wasted their time on compiling that list, its researchers have then come up with a list of famous “people” living at houses with unlucky numbers.

So who were these unfortunate souls?

The three quoted by Confused.com were Max Branning (a character in EastEnders), the Peacocks (a family in Coronation Street) and Sherlock Holmes.

Now the last time Mr Pendle checked, EastEnders and Coronation Street were television soap operas, containing fictional characters as opposed to real people.

The same goes for Sherlock Holmes - he was not a person, but a fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the late 19th Century.

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Confused.com could not find one real person living in an unlucky house number to back up its claims.

So why does Mr Pendle refer to their research as tosh?

As Holmes would say, it’s elementary, my dears, it’s elementary.