The past couple of tuesdays I have tuned into the rot box watch 'Secrets from the Workhouse' on ITV to see some poncy actors try unconvincingly to show how shocked they are that their own ancestors were incarcerated in workhouses. I watched to see what these places were like inside as I was born in old Whiston Hospital in south Lancashire which was originally built as Prescot Union Workhouse in 1842 and having lived in a homeless hostel I have an interest in the lineage and history of institutions for relief of the poor.
Even if I could get over the soppy celebrities with plummy accents I cannot for a moment tolerate yet another blow to our cultural identity by a program supposedly interested in heritage. By this I mean the ignorant way they state that the Lancashire districts of Dalton-in-Furness and Ulverston are in 'Cumbria', a local authority created in the 1970's that DID NOT replace the historic county boundaries, only the local governance of the area. So why must history programmes say bollocks such as Stan Laurel is Cumbrian, he isn't, he's Lancastrian and by eck back when he entered the world there was no confusion where his hometown of Ulverston was.
It sickens me to see local authorities, local newspapers and educational establishments getting such things wrong when they profess to care about their localities but it is mind-boggling that bodies apparently formed to defend heritage including museums, conservation groups and re-enactment societies have no care for the facts of geography. They print rubbish like the Battle of Towton, North Yorkshire, it's in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the corporation dustmnen weren't around then to clean up the corpses.
Education is being perverted by divvys who even mistake their own birthplaces. Please see the Friends of Real Lancashire website for proof that no legislation has changed our historic county borders.
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