I'm fed up with the negative attitudes towards our town manager who is working - and trying very hard to bring unity and progress into our community.

In my humble opinion town manager Mick gains is not on trial. We who live in the twin towns, and that includes our councillors, are on trial.

Everything in the garden is not rosy. We now have the prospect of a war and recession to deal with, following flooding and foot and mouth. We need united leadership, not constant bickering, sniping and negative thinking, especially from our councillors.

We need to progress, to move forward in so many ways, we must be ready to welcome and accept change, the sort Mick Gains is proposing. We must support him, everyone who has the real interests of our community and its future at heart. I say community because, in my opinion, Malton and Norton are as one, divided only by a few voices.

The alternative to change is too awful to contemplate. We need good ideas, and projects to bring confidence and prosperity to the twin towns.

Mick helped me with the Malton Motor Show and he's right in saying we were lucky with the weather and getting Heartbeat star Bill Maynard to open it. We needed some luck, like most ventures.

I decided to get involved because I was fed up with all the whinging and lack of unity in our community. Others who gave their time to help make it a success felt exactly the same way. We were untied and also determined to create something enjoyable and worthwhile and raise money for charity at the same time.

We have a great asset in Mike Gains. He's a doer, not a talker. We have lots of talkers in the twin towns, mostly negative voices ready to shoot down any worthwhile ideas.

It is also true the Motor Show is just one annual event, now a memory, but we intend to improve on it greatly in 2002. Mick Gains has a vital role to play in our team.

We need more events like it to attract interest in our community and also boost local trade, like many other small towns we'll soon be facing harder times.

Why do so many people want to live in the past? This is a great place to live, one of the best in Britain. We need to keep what's good and swiftly change the bad and negative things and attitudes which unfortunately tend to dominate thinking and kill ideas and progress.

For goodness sake lets start working together to build up a winning team spirit in the twin towns. It's the only way forward for us all.

Updated: 11:57 Thursday, October 04, 2001