I MAY not have been born here but almost 25 years living, working and watching life in East Lancashire does give your new columnist the right to comment.

And that's precisely what I will do in the coming weeks...if it is happening here and I reckon it's good, bad or downright daft.

I'll tackle a range of subjects as wide as the Leeds and Liverpool Canal is long and look forward to hearing your views too.

And this week I had to look no further than the depressingly gloomy, sweeping comments of Lancashire County Council's £181,827-a-year chief executive Chris Trinick.

A lot of work was put in by the late Anthony Wilson, and is being continued by Elevate and his partner Yvette Livesey, to try to tackle what is this region's biggest single problem - its image in the minds of the dealmakers and tycoons who can transform whole areas by injecting energy, imagination and cash.

Many towns and cities around the country have been lifted out of the doldrums in the last ten years by ambition and a touch of brazen cheek.

Just look, for example, at what has happened in Newcastle and Gateshead.

There's no question that Blackburn, Burnley and Accrington sorely need such help.

And not just by knocking down old, crumbling houses.

But in words that have a real 1980s ring, the boss of our lumbering county council dismisses ideas like the Fashion Tower, and other such schemes backed by Elevate, as "the chitter chatter of middle-class dinner parties."

What utter rot.

Is the message that East Lancashire folk should accept their lot and learn to live with the fact that the area will always be depressed?

With that thinking, man would never have invented the wheel, ventured into space or even dug the Leeds and Liverpool canal!

Of course some schemes might be a trifle over-ambitious.

But Tony Wilson will be remembered as a man who had BIG ideas and managed to make a reasonable proportion of them happen.

What we expect from people as highly placed as Mr Trinick is inspiration and drive, not wet-blanket negativity.

And what's wrong with the "middle-class dinner parties" talking positively about where our area could and should be going?

We desperately need people with power, influence and money to be discussing East Lancashire and how to transform its image.

Elevate have politely said they don't want to get involved in an argument with Mr Trinick.

Burnley Council leader Gordon Birtwistle wasn't quite so diplomatic. He described the comments as "outrageous."

Mr Trinick retires next May and the council has advertised for his successor.

That person should believe that vision is more than a mere middle-class dalliance.