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Opinion

Heywood: a silent victory?

BNP demonstrators and police in Heywood

I had to go into Heywood yesterday afternoon to buy a few bits and bats and do a few banking transactions. It was one of those lazy, sunny, late spring days. People were going about their normal business and all was as it should be.

Date published: 18/05/2012

Rochdale’s Olympic Spirit

In June, the Olympic torch will wend its way through Rochdale and Heywood, carried aloft by people deemed worthy of the honour no doubt but nary a mention for John Hardcastle – but I’ll come back to that one.

Date published: 29/03/2012

Election pledge: The Honesty Party

The month after next, the local elections will be upon us once again and I am minded to stand as a candidate. I have had a good look round at the local parties but to be honest, none of them really appeal to me so I thought I’d form my own.

I think that in Rochdale we really are due for a change. I know that they all say that but I really mean it. Like many, I don’t think...

Date published: 06/03/2012

Falinge: Lights, camera... obfuscation

I suppose by Hollywood standards, £54,000 is not much to spend on a film. I mean, it cost $200 million to make the film ‘Titanic’ (it only cost $7.5 million to build the original ship). However, this is not Hollywood, it’s dear old Rochdale or to be more precise, Falinge.

Date published: 08/02/2012

Is Rochdale troubled by its teens?

On Rochdale Online’s news pages I was interested in three separate and seemingly unrelated stories relating to young people.

Firstly, there is the truly shocking statistic that in Rochdale, 43 per cent of children are living below the official poverty line in the Smallbridge and Firgrove ward.

Date published: 16/01/2012

2012: Year of the Disabled?

Twenty one years ago this week, the United Nations declared 1981 as the Year of the Disabled Person. We were all encouraged to talk to the person in the wheelchair rather than the person pushing it.

Date published: 05/01/2012

Living with dignity: the great pension debate

And so, next Wednesday, we are to be treated to a one-day strike of public sector workers which, depending on your optimism-pessimism quotient will either bring the country to its knees in shades reminiscent of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ or will be a bit of a damp squib with a bit of chanting here and there and a few schools and public swimming pools being closed.

Date published: 24/11/2011

Remembrance Day 2011

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

So what is it all about, this Remembrance Day malarkey?

Date published: 14/11/2011

Leadership change: Spring clean or total makeover

Well, I don't know Wera personally but I wish her well in her new role and hope that she possesses the skills, vision and forebearence to bring about a sea-change within the culture of the Rochdale Liberal Democrats.

Rochdale as a whole can only benefit from an end to sleaze and infighting within its political parties.

Date published: 12/05/2011

Infirmary ‘Players’: Tragedy or Farce?

“Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.”
John Mortimer
Congratulations to the Rochdale Infirmary Players who have just produced their 30th Panto; Dick Whittington.
How these demoralised staff continue to give up their own time to raise money for our beleaguered health services is astounding

Date published: 10/02/2011

The party’s over?

It’s been a strange couple of weeks for me. I’ve started to write my opinion piece three or four times but scarcely have I raised quill to parchment than the subject that I was going to write about undergoes a sudden and unexpected sea-change. Needless to say my wastepaper-basket is full of my scrunched up efforts.

Date published: 10/12/2010

Rochdale left with the stick... again!

Rochdale Infirmary

Well, at last what we have long predicted and feared will soon come to pass.

Rochdale’s last hospital will soon close its doors to patients because of financial pressures. Do I need to...

Date published: 09/11/2010

CSI Rochdale

“In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall. “ Bob Dylan.

The events that took place in Rochdale town centre in the early hours of Sunday morning were, by anyone’s standards, truly shocking. I viewed the aftermath of the drama with a strange mixture of fascination and revulsion and watched the...

Date published: 18/10/2010

The government of national unity?

And so, George Osborne of all people has found an issue upon which to unite the country. There’s nothing that unites the good old British public more than the notion that everyone who qualifies for some sort of state benefit is some sort of shiftless, parasitic scrounger who is too idle to work.

Date published: 05/10/2010

Sir Cyril: Thanks for the Memories?

Sir Cyril Smith - 80th Birthday Party

Great men should not have great faults

Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

I was reading about the reaction of the late Sir Cyril Smith’s family to the rehashed ‘Private Eye’ piece...

Date published: 20/09/2010

Last Day of Summer

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
William Shakespeare. Sonnet 18

On Saturday I took the boys out for a drive to blow away the cobwebs and take advantage of the good weather.

Date published: 06/09/2010

A Tale of Two Cities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven,...

Date published: 31/08/2010

Dream a little dream

Well, there I was in the town centre on Saturday together with Mrs Hardcastle and the two boys. The place was buzzing and packed with people out to have fun.
Needless to say, these were not shoppers. Rochdale town centre doesn’t seem to have been full of these since Adam was a lad. No, these were attendees of the Feel Good Festival, headed up by top 90s band The Lightning...

Date published: 15/08/2010

Keeping it local

Word reaches my rheumy old ears about the Town Centre Mis-management’s latest contribution to their ‘Shop Local’ initiative that they’ve been pushing down our throats for the past umpteen months.

They have now launched a new scheme called ‘Love Rochdale’ and have given the work on this to a company from Rossendale!

Date published: 08/08/2010

Our disappearing hospital

Like many, I turned out to hear Mrs Gloria Oates OBE DL attempt to reassure us at the public consultation meetings that change was coming and it was for the better. Tell that to anyone who has read the latest Rochdale Online report on the ending of emergency ambulance services during the hours when nightfall descends on Rochdale.

Date published: 08/07/2010

The Law Society

I read with a mixture of boredom and general disinterest, news reports of Councillor Greg Couzens exhorting us to sign up to a government online initiative to ‘name, shame and scrap’ your least favourite law.

Date published: 05/07/2010

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