When the decision to award the Games to London was first announced, Mr Pendle had serious misgivings about the merits of it all – and even more serious ones about how much it was all going to cost.

And the news last week about taxpayers having to save the £1 billion athletes' village following the collapse of a private financing scheme left him shaking his head and saying to himself: "I told you so".

This is the third time this year the Government has announced a rescue package for the Games.

Ministers last week approved an injection of £324m. into the village, taking public investment in the project to £650m.

The money comes from a contingency fund which originally stood at £2.7 billion - and yet the Government still asks us to believe that the £9.3 billion public budget originally set aside for the Games will not be exceeded.

There are still three years to go until the Olympics, and there is still much work to be done.

Ministers might think they have things under control – but they are skating on continuously thinning ice and Mr Pendle feels it is only a matter of time before the cracks start to appear and the simmering cauldron of public disquiet about the Olympic shemozzle starts to bubble and boil over.


WE carried a story a few weeks ago which told of 13 people being fined for not taking in their wheelie bins after they had been emptied.
Immediately, a reader asked why only 13, when many more bins can be seen on street corners all over Pendle – sentiments which Mr Pendle echoes.

Where do these 13 bin owners live?

And what about all the other lazy people too shiftless to take their bins "home"?


REGULAR readers will know Mr Pendle has become more and more disillusioned with football over the years.

The changing of the rules to reduce the level of permitted physical contact, the telephone number salaries of pampered prima donna players with gloriously inflated egos as to their own importance and the ridiculous preoccupation of the national press Messrs Ferguson, Benitez, Wenger and the rest are enough to put anyone off.

But on Monday, Mr Pendle will become a fan again for a day as Burnley take on Sheffield United in the Championship play-off final at Wembley.

Like hundreds of other armchair Clarets fans, he will be cheering the team on as he watches the game on television.

Come on, Burnley, you can do it!