It’s No Secret ! Although somewhat tucked away ( Past the Leisure Centre, Near the Tip)


It’s Actually the Biggest Garage in Padiham. Checklist


√ TYRES - All makes, Sizes & Price Ranges √ BATTERIES - Top Quality 4 Year Warranty √ EXHAUSTS - Everything From Standard To Stainless √ MOT’s - Class 4 Cars Small Vans & Motorhomes Class 7 Larger Vans & Tippers √ SERVICING - To all makes, Petrol, Diesel, LPG, at Prices we Guarantee will stun the Competition √ REPAIRS - Clutches, Cam Belts, Engine Work, Brakes, Minor Electrical, DIAGNOSTICS by Bosch & Snap - On


AND A FULLY EQUIPED BODYSHOP TOO.


√ INSURANCE REPAIRS - Approved by Most Companies √ COURTESY CARS - Available by Arrangement √ CLAIM MANAGEMENT - Full Facilities Including Injuries √ CUSTOM PAINTWORK - Show Standards With Awards to Prove It


THERE REALLY IS NO WHERE QUITE LIKE IT 10% DISCOUNT WITH THIS ADVERT


OPEN 8.30am Till 10.00pm MON - THURS 8.30am Till 8.00pm FRIDAY 8.30am Till 1.00pm SATURDAY BATES CAR & COMMERCIAL


PARK RD PADIHAM 01282 779993


Maid Clean.


Covering Burnley Padiham and Pendle. All our staff are CRB checked, fully trained, professionals.


Tailor made cleaning packages to meet your individual needs, including Hospital cleaning service. Come back from hospital to a sparkling house, and let us take care of all your domestic duties whilst you recover.


Regular cleans, one off cleans, end of tenancy cleans, landlord services, OAP assisted cleans. OAP shopping. OAP laundry. 10% discount on all OAP services.


Call Maid Clean on: 01282 619698 www.maid-clean.co.uk


The Trials of Running Your Own Business. Whist carrying out his duties as a paramedic, Martin Grogan saw many cases of people returning from hospital and needing help with the normal day to day chores until they fully recover. This saw the “Maid Clean,” business develop for his partner Rachel and almost immediately taking on another two staff. Many of their clients are often quite vulnerable so Rachel felt it would be comforting to get all the staff CRB checked and to make sure references were available. To promote the business, cards and leaflets were printed and several adverts were placed, including some in The Local Herald, asking any interested parties to ring their new BT number. Then the problems started. There are often challenges and teething problems with any new business but this problem was quite bazaar, BT had stopped the number. After endless heated phone calls BT promised to restore their original allocated number, but, wait for it, it would take at least 2 weeks. So all the effort of promoting their new business was wasted, existing clients would be frustrated when they couldn’t get through, and how do you calculate the lost revenue ? By the time you are reading this edition Rachel & Martin are hoping that everything is back to normal and their advertised number back in action. If you need their services call:


6. 01282 619698 or email: info@maid-clean.co.uk


Grumpy Git Following last month’s look back over the last decade, our dear old editor challenged me to use this month’s issue to have a look forward to the next decade. To guess what might change, and what ought to change but very probably won’t. Clearly, in requesting my foresight, he has never backed any of my horse racing tips, most of which have ended up pulling milk floats, or carrying obese children on Blackpool beach. There are some doom-merchants out there who see immigration as the biggest single threat to our way of life, Certainly the extension of EU borders into Eastern Europe has resulted in a huge influx of people coming to our relatively affluent society to seek a much more comfortable standard of living. Of course the gross ineptitude of the government didn’t help, who, for example expected around fifty thousand Poles before being forced to accommodate nearer half a million. Yet you know what? I don’t feel the walls of Hyndburn closing in around me squeezing the very last drop of life-blood from me. What I also know is that the vast majority of these immigrants are wholly responsible, work very hard, contribute positively to our broad church society, and very rarely appear in court after nights of drunken violence.


Of course our Eastern European visitors are in stark contrast to a large chunk of our indigenous population. Those benefit-dependent young men who truant through a pointless education, refuse to follow an established career path, and are content to bleed dry the beleaguered taxpayer. I have never subscribed to National Service on the grounds it might dilute the effectiveness of the services, and also because it merely teaches the socially and intellectually inept how to kill efficiently ! However, we cannot spend the next decade funding these layabouts. No person other than the medically incapable of work should receive any benefits from the social security system. Put simply, if you put nowt in, you get nowt out. That might just concentrate minds a little don’t you think ? I wonder if there really is a government out there brave enough to implement such a policy.


What else might happen in the next ten years? Global warming might well be uncovered for the ridiculous money-making sham it is. Scientists try and cover up the undeniable fact that the Earth has undergone similar temperature differentials throughout its long evolution. Yet still the Guardian-reading enviro-geeks tell us to holiday in Bispham rather than Barbados, Fleetwood as opposed to Florida. We must reduce our carbon footprints and make air travel a thing of the past they smugly urge whilst totally forgetting that emissions from aviation make up only two per cent of the planet’s carbon dioxide output. I, like many of us, can happily embrace the concept of recycling for example, but some of these obsessed “green” people are humourless curmudgeons who very probably are so miserable they even cry on Christmas Day.


Elsewhere, certain things are likely to continue as ever before. Various groups of workers on Merseyside will continue to withdraw their labour on a weekly basis. Of course they all with one voice deplore the effect their action will have on the public, there being absolutely no desire to disrupt us don’t you know? And then when workers elsewhere walk out in support, the Scousers will all hurry back to work. How dare the rest of Britain have the temerity to support them? On a more serious note, less people will fill our churches and will choose the much easier option of a godless, secular society. I know for some a religious life is seen as old-fashioned and possibly uncool, but the values underpinned by most religions are those we need in the next ten years to repair some of the damage done to our society by lack of respect and responsibility.


Health and safety and political correctness will inevitably form a tighter grasp on our society. And whilst protecting and looking after our children has no more nobler cause, I fear the day is not too distant when to speak to a three year-old in the park chasing his football will require you to have a full CRB disclosure and have been assessed by a panel of senior social workers none of whom has ever had a family of their own. The word “black” will be removed from the dictionary for fear of offending blackbirds and Christmas will be moved to June to help the tiny percentage of malingerers suffering from Seasonally Affected Syndrome. Add to that millions of us who will be diagnosed with new and mysterious diseases dreamed up by university science departments purely for the purpose of getting new research grants. As Bill Laurie might have said in Dad’s Army “We’re all doomed Captain Mainwaring, doomed !!”


The above are hopes and aspirations, fears and worries, and calculated predictions. I can leave you this year with one certainty. Come 11.59pm on December 31st, 2019…..the D.F.S sale will most definitely not have ended.


A Happy New Year to you all and May God Bless you and yours.


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