Here we go, heading for another bright new dawn

THE FRIDAY THING: SHINY new council leader Jim McMahon will not thank me for saying so but following the huge picture of him on the front of Tuesday’s Chronicle he is in danger of becoming something of a local heartthrob.

He has been variously described to me as dishy, sexy and in one overly gushing and over-the-top contribution, like a brooding young Marlon Brando. Steady on there!

To old fogies like me he looks as though he should be wearing short pants and a school tie (calm down now ladies) or sitting in the church choir, but then what do I know.

Jim is supported by a hugely experienced team, foremost among who is John Battye, closely followed by Dave Hibbert, both of whom have been tireless champions of Oldham.

And Jim has set himself a fierce political agenda, which includes rescuing Latics, cutting councillors’ allowances, bringing two cinemas into the borough, reversing some of the Lib-Dems cuts, getting everyone who lives here to believe in Oldham, cuts in jobs, reducing managers and sharing work with other local councils.

Jim says that he is not promising anything that he can’t deliver and for the sake of Oldham I hope he is right.

But he will have a pretty high wall of scepticism to scramble over (cut knees and all) because Oldhamers have had more than their fill of promises of bright new dawns and have enough fancy, brightly-coloured brochures showing how Oldham could look, to fill every pothole in the borough.

So I wish Jim and his excellent team good luck and hope that future events will not stand in the way of his revolutionary zeal.



THE latest must-have fashion accessory is a superinjunction which, at a cost of around £50,000, prevents stories about you and your illicit heart’s desire (though in truth the heart is not the organ which orchestrates the passions) from appearing in the newspapers.

Are there any superinjunctions in the name of Oldhamers? Probably not, the price of illicit passion here is more likely to be few vodka cocktails and a takeaway kebab than £50k.

The world of celebrity, populated by overpaid and often under- talented footballers, A-list actors and household TV names (cat wormers and incontinence pads excepted) is the province of the superinjunction, taken out in the name of secrecy, which really means preventing him or her indoors from finding out what you’ve been up to when you said you were at Rotary or the WI.

No, in the real world what you have to be worried about if you, shall we say stray from the nest, is bumping into someone you know and who knows you in the pub, restaurant or hotel corridor (unless they are there for the same reason as you).

But beware, nowhere is safe. I had a chum who took the object of his love (lust, really) to southern Ireland with intentions to kiss more than the Blarney Stone and bumped into his wife’s sister in the hotel dining room at breakfast.

Such shudder-inducing, mind-freezing thoughts are far more potent than a superinjunction. Or so I am told.



FINAL WORD: On behalf of the No to AV campaign, I extend a big thanks to Royce Franklin and David Quarmby whose contribution to the debate (letters, May 4) helped to convert many don’t knows into definite no’s, thus giving Oldham a resounding 71 per cent thumbs down to a change in the voting system. Well done guys.