Many people against the boundary committee changes are saying that splitting West Lancs in two will mean that we are cut out of Lancashire.

This has touched on a point that people are genuinely worried about, but it’s a spurious argument. The administrative area of Lancashire County Council is a fraction of the historic county of Lancashire. Many who live within the historic boundaries of the County know that they are in Lancashire, that they are Lancastrians, but they don’t pay their Council Tax to the “Lancashire” County Council.

In the past, I’ve lived in Wigan, Colchester and Twickenham. In Wigan we used “Lancashire” in our addresses, in Colchester it was “Essex” and in Twickenham we used “Middlesex”. Not because that was who we paid our Council Tax to, but because they were the historic counties. Middlesex hasn’t “existed” as an authority for thirty years, but they still have a county cricket club, “Middlesex Sevens” and millions of people know that they still live in the county.

Maybe it would be better for everyone if Lancashire was to cease as a council. That would mean we would all be Lancastrians again, in the metropolitan areas and the cities aswell as the narrowly defined County Council area.