Blackpool Gazette’s headlines feature all too many murders these days. In the news pages, you read of violent attacks all along the seafront, some fuelled by alcohol, some not. Government ministers talk all the time about anti-social behaviour and what they are going to do about it – but the perception it is getting worse
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Paul Maynard talks about his visit to a very special child and her family.

It is great news that the Government was defeated over the supercasino, and that Blackpool’s hopes live again, even if only tenuously. But I wonder whether, even if Blackpool were to get the final nod, companies would be willing to invest in a supercasino after Gordon Brown’s body-blow to the casino industry? I just can’t
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… that there has been a 27% increase in tuberculosis in the North West between 2003 and 2005? I was at an exhibition earlier this week at the Barbican on the work of the Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto, one of my all-time heroes. One of his greatest works is the tuberculosis sanatorium he built
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As is always the case with Gordon Brown’s budgets the devil is in the detail, so here’s some of what we missed yesterday: Anyone earning £5-15,000 pounds a year will now have to pay tax at 20p in the pound rather than just 10p; Gaming duty in casinos will go up to 50% for big
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Well there we are. Gordon’s last budget. A 2 pence cut in the standard rate of income tax … … paid for by abolishing the 10p rate and pushing up NICs for higher earners. So we all suffer somehow – hitting Blackpool and Cleveleys especially hard, since incomes in these parts tend to be below
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