LOVE IT

There is a place that we all love
A place for you and me,
Somewhere we should be proud of
A place we know called leigh.

Us leythers are a happy lot
Living here is just a dream,
So come on people , stand with us
And support our rugby team.

So if you think there's nowt to do,
Get out your hole.... Stop diggin,
I'd rather watch my championship team,
Than move my butt to 'wiggin

Absolutely spot on. I have a shop in LEIGH and wigoon council are killing us,but how do we stop the rot from them lot ? By the way I do like the poem posted by DJ.

They have even dropped the 'Metro' bit now.

Leigh used to be a splendid town to work and live in but sadly we have lost our identity.

I am still immensely proud to be from Leigh and to be a long life follower of it's Rugby League team but I look look at some of the young people who choose to loiter all day outside our once great town hall and wonder when it all started to go wrong.

I think the answer at least in part is in this thread.

I echo everything said but it'll never happen. Far too many foreigners around here now but a section of the local kids are more worrying for me.

No regard for the town, the people that live in it, and don't want a job.

It is a myth Keith.

Spot on Toadstool.

It is way too easy to blame the immigrants - and the benefits claimants etc etc.

This is what the 1% (who own 95% of the wealth) want you to do. It distracts your attention so that they can go on bleeding the public purse dry with their off shore accounts / trust funds / privatisation schemes / golden goodbyes as reward for failure / bank bailouts / inflated expenses claims / other tax dodging schemes etc etc. Whatever the immigrants and benefits bill cost us is a drop in the ocean compared to the real rip off merchants.

And we've always had immigrants in Leigh. In our class at X11 Apostles fifty years ago we had names like Jezerski, Czuplak, Luchenko, Dilajonas, Pytlascinski, Haladji out of a class of 30 (and that's only those I can remember).

True but most of those names were relatives of people who had fought / worked for this country

Like I said earlier I have a shop in LEIGH and find it very very frustrating to see the demise of the town centre. If I didn't have a shop in the town centre I wouldn't come in to the depressing town at all unless I really had to.Oh and I've lived in LEIGH for over 50 years and just can't beLEIGHve how It's being left to rot when we have a front bench MP representing this town.

I was born and brought up in Plank Lane and have always been a lover of Leigh. However I think it is absolutely stupid to blame Wigan for all our ills. The problems highlighted above are symptomatic of our society and are not a result of being part of Wigan. Wigan has always been an excellent local authority which has been recognised both nationally and internationally. When it was created as a local authority the old Wigan borough was in a minority and all the other areas of the borough had ,and still have, the casting vote on policy etc.

Agreed not all our ills, Samwilly but it seems to me that public spending in Wigan town centre, which is as thriving a place as virtually any in the country, has come at the expense of Leyth, Atherton, Tyldesley, Golborne etc.

There was an article in "Metro Life" a few months ago where they were bragging they'd had a million pounds from the Heritage Lottery Fund to be spent on further smartening up Wigan town centre. I saw my a*** with that and fired an email straight off to them saying "Well whoop de doo, more public money spent in Wigan - well where's ours, where's Atherton's etc?"

Three guesses whether they published it.

Are you suggesting every person who is Leigh born works hard and all immigrants are claiming benefits ?

I don't think we should steryotype anyone just because of where they happen to have been born.

Maybe I am missing your point.

Well I am not a young man anymore but we have had immigration into this country and emigration since I was a little lad.

I remember the late Enoch Powell arranging large immigration into the UK of West Indians to do jobs British people did not want and that was in the fifties when he was employment minister.

I also remember the mass relocation of Asians to the UK from Uganda when Idi Amin was Dictator of Uganda.

For me I don't see immigration as a good or bad thing as it is a fact of life for most countries with developed economies.

Through the course of my life I have met people from various countries and have quite a few friends from and in other countries. It is not ones nationality that matters to most' I think it is down to the way people conduct themselves.

On a per person basis, immigrants from Eastern Europe contribute more in tax and consume less in public services than the UK average.

This isn't a myth....