I WOULD like to comment on the ‘cover up over coat of arms’ story in last week’s Journal.

Firstly these new signs have been brought in over the heads of residents. This at a time when the council is constantly complaining that it has a lack of funds available and has raised council tax by the maximum of two per cent.

Secondly the coat of arms displayed on our street signs is almost identical to the Wigan one and contains all its main symbols.

More than 90 per cent of it is the same.

If you do a comparison by taking away the biggest town’s population (97,000) from the population of the borough (317,000) then that implies that the 221,000 of us, or the rest of the towns in the borough put together, only account for less than 10 per cent of the representation presented on this crest.

Thirdly the history of towns go back hundreds of years. To sweep that away with a recently made up symbol does not do justice to the people who make up those towns.

I would be interested to know who came up with this symbol, how representative they set out to be and how many ordinary people from other towns were involved.

There are hardly any symbols from other towns included.

If you look at the Salford MBC street signs, at the boundaries of Tyldesley and Salford care has been taken to come up with an inclusive sign that does not pander to any town or city being the dominant one.

It is no wonder that people are replacing the signs with sticker ones that are more representative.

I think that sadly the council has scored another own goal with this and it can only get people’s backs up when they are presented with a sign that means very little to them.

I would even extend this symbolism to include the mayoral office.

When the ‘mayor’ visits Leigh, Atherton etc they should use the regalia of that town and represent the people of that town.

It is not the same when it is the ‘mayor of Wigan’. It sounds imperial and remote.

It also does not allow for a proper freeman/freewoman ceremony where a local of that town can be honoured by the dignitaries of that town and given the freedom ceremony, within the same locality. 

It would also add a much needed boost to those towns and be more authentic towards the ‘Believe in...’ attitude towards that town.

It seems a bit odd to be advertising ‘Believe in....’ and then using signs and symbols of other non historically connected towns.

There are overdue honours in Leigh for people such as Georgie Fame, Pete Shelley, Alex Murphy, John Woods, Nigel Short etc and none of this can be done properly unless it is kept local, with local support.

To try to re-brand everyone as ‘Wiganers’ as your article mentions, after hundreds of years of history, is just not effective.

Is it any wonder that people feel disenfranchised?

All these issues should be subject to a referendum and not just brought in by an anonymous executive as currently seems the status quo.

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