It’s no secret that Makerfield has been at the heart of political attention since former Labour MP, Josh Simons, announced he was stepping down.

Mr Simons said he was giving up his seat so the mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham could enter Parliament and “drive the change our country is crying out for”.

Since then, it’s been all eyes on Makerfield, for an unconventional by-election that may decide not only the fate of the constituency, but the country.

If he wins, some of Mr Burnham’s supporters believe he has a path to becoming Prime Minister before Parliament breaks for the summer recess.

So, what have smack barms got to do with all this?

On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the panel (Josh Simons, broadcaster Jo Coburn, and author Will Self) discussed the political storm.

Naturally, the conversation turned to Mr Burnham, the by-election and Mr Simons’ part in it.

Josh Simons was most recently the Labour MP for Makerfield and left the Commons on May 18 (Image: Roger Harris/UK Parliament)

When asked for his thoughts, political commentator Mr Self began by talking about when he last visited Wigan and had a smack barm.

He described a smack barm as the “end bits of chips out of the bottom of the pan”.

However, he didn’t get it quite right, and may have been confusing it with a scrap barm.

Served in between a classic barm, a smack barm and pea wet is a potato special, as it’s known in Bolton, with pea juice providing a condiment of sorts.

Barms aside, Mr Self said he paid just 10p for a smack barm on his last visit, clearly quite a while ago.

“It’s a poor constituency, it’s a very poor constituency,” he said.

According to Mr Self, Labour is searching for an “organic figure to unite them with their past, who’s going to cancel out time”.

He said the ‘Burnham factor’ is rooted in a kind of nostalgia for an idealised past that never really existed.

Andy Burnham is one of the party’s most popular politicians, dubbed the “King of the North” (Image: Stock)

Mr Simons defended his decision to resign his seat and said: “Over the last 40 years, the basic way that we run our economy is shafting my constituents.”

“Still eating smack barms,” Mr Self retorted.

“They’re now probably £1.50,” said Mr Simons.

“What are they supposed to feel if it’s £1.50 for a smack barm?”

We put it to our Bolton readers, as barms are often a highly debated topic, have you ever tried a smack barm?

Or should this speciality be left with our friends down the road?

The incident involved a red Gazelle e-bike and occurred at around 9.36pm on Monday (May 18).

The suspect was arrested at an address linked to a tracking device that the owner of the bike had place on it.

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A North Yorkshire Police spokesperson said: “The victim discovered the theft at around 10pm and was able to provide officers with live tracking information.”

Neighbourhood Policing Inspector Jen Stockwell said: “This case demonstrates the speed and effectiveness of our officers, who acted quickly on tracking information to recover the stolen bike and identify a suspect.

“New powers introduced under the Crime and Policing Act are helping us respond faster than ever to theft offences.

“We would strongly encourage cyclists to consider fitting tracking devices to their bikes where possible. Technology like this can make a significant difference in helping us recover stolen property.

“We take bike theft very seriously in York and remain committed to protecting our communities and pursuing those responsible.”

The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office is urging schools to limit screen time across the board, warning that over-exposure to tech in the classroom can harm children’s health.

“While screen use can have some benefits, the evidence of a range of risks to children’s overall mental and physical health is mounting,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in a statement introducing a new tech-themed advisory from the office, which was released on Wednesday.

Excessive technology use can be a “path to addiction-like behavior,” Kennedy added.

The report urges schools to implement a “bell-to-bell” ban on cellphone use, encourage extracurriculars and physical activity, and keep screen use in dedicated computer labs.

“Invest in physical textbooks and prioritize pen-and-paper curricula, hands on activities, and social activities for all grade levels,” the report advises. “Limit screen use by assigning work in books or on paper whenever possible.”

The advisory notes that there are “knowledge gaps” in the research comparing the wide variety of digital and analog learning methods, but it argues strong steps still need to be taken.

“We cannot wait for every question to be settled before acting,” the report reads.

In 2024, the Biden administration surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, called on Congress to require a health warning label on social media platforms. The office of the surgeon general currently lacks a confirmed permanent leader. The president has nominated Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor.

Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia already limit cellphone use, and Iowa, Tennessee, and Utah have laws seeking to limit overall screen time in schools, according to EdWeek.

Tech companies have also faced scrutiny in courts this year for the alleged health impacts of their platforms, including a California court finding Instagram and YouTube liable for being addictive and a New Mexico jury finding that Meta products were harmful to children’s mental health.

Outside of schools, the surgeon general’s report urges children to “live real life” as much as possible and suggests parents have clear tech boundaries in the home while delaying the use of screens for “as long as possible.”

The recommendations clash somewhat with the Trump administration’s strong embrace of artificial intelligence, including in education settings.

Last year, the first lady unveiled a presidential AI challenge and the president issued an executive order seeking to preempt state-level AI regulation, some of which has focused on protecting children from potential harms.

The president has been a strong supporter overall of the tech industry, many of whose leading figures and companies donated heavily to his campaign, inauguration, and White House ballroom project.

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Fire crews remain at the scene in Summerston after flames ripped through the roof of a terraced property on Wednesday evening.

Emergency crews are battling a house fire in Glasgow where dramatic images show thick black smoke pouring from the roof of a residential property. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service confirmed they were called to Blackhill Road at around 7.48pm on Wednesday May 20, following reports of a blaze at a home.

Footage sent to the Record shows huge plumes of smoke rising above the Summerston area and visible from a distance across the city. Another video filmed closer to the scene shows flames ripping through the roof of what appears to be a terraced property.

Four fire appliances and a height vehicle were sent to the scene as firefighters worked to tackle the blaze. Crews remained in attendance on Wednesday night.

It is not yet known if anyone has been injured. A spokesperson for Scottish Fire and Rescue Service told the Record: “We received an alert at 19.48 on Wednesday, May 20, to reports of a house fire at Blackhill Road, Summerston, in Glasgow.

“Four appliances attended with one height appliance also in attendance. Crews remain at the scene.”

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The Environment Agency has been leading a criminal investigation into the illegal dump near residential homes in Wigan

A man has been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into the illegal dumping of waste, including at the notorious toxic site on Bolton House Road where an estimated 25,000 tonnes of material has been discarded.

The ‘ocean of rubbish’ first emerged last summer in Bickershaw when a week-long fire saw some of the waste burn, forcing nearby schools to close. A criminal investigation is underway to find out who was responsible for dumping the rubbish at the former scrapyard.

And earlier this year, a closure order banning access to the illegal waste site was granted. This was put in place to prevent access for any unauthorised individuals.

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Officers from West Midlands Police, working in support of the Environment Agency, secured the arrest of the suspect. A 58-year-old male from the Birmingham area was arrested for environmental, fraud and money laundering offences.

The suspect has now been released on conditional bail pending further investigation. No further details were released by the Environment Agency, who are leading the criminal probe into the towering dump near homes.

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The investigation is being led by the EA’s National Environmental Crime Unit, which is seeking to find those responsible for the offending. Angry locals said multiple lorries carrying rubbish to the site piled waste up to 20 metres high over several months beginning in January 2025.

Shocking images show thousands of black bin bags full of household rubbish like nappies as well as harmful chemicals and plastics littering the area.

It’s thought a clean-up could cost £4.5m. The Government said in March they would directly fund the operation to clear the site.

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Last year, after a major blaze at the site, former Makerfield MP Josh Simons said he had ‘been pushing the Environment Agency every time [he] meets with them to move further and faster’.

Ian Crewe, Area Director for Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire at the Environment Agency, said: “The illegal dumping at sites across England are an attack on our communities, and the Environment Agency shares their disgust at these horrendous crimes.

“Our teams have been working relentlessly on this investigation, and yesterday’s arrest are a vital step in collecting new evidence and progressing it further.”

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said: “We are cracking down on waste criminals – putting an end to the damage they cause, by boosting funds to tackle waste crime, putting more boots on the ground and and giving stronger powers to our enforcement teams. If you dump waste illegally, we will come after you.”

Bolton Councillors elected Labour Cllr Akhtar Zaman to be their new leader yesterday (May 20), after the recent local elections left Bolton leaderless.

Votes for Cllr Zaman came from within Labour itself – who still have 20 seats – from the Liberal Democrats, and from the Horwich and Blackrod First and other independents.

Councillor Akhtar Zaman as Leader of the Labour Group, with Councillor Martyn Donaghy (Image: Bolton Labour)

Cllr Leader Zaman addressed the chamber: “Never did I believe that I would be leader of this great town – to me Bolton is the most beautiful place on the earth.

“I would like to say thank you to Nick Peel, a man of incredible talents.

“I came to this town over forty years ago with absolutely nothing, and this town took me in and gave me everything I have today.

“This is the reason why I stand in front of you all.

“I got involved in politics when I was in the voluntary sector 30 years ago.

Cllr Nadim Muslim stood against Cllr Zaman (Image: Cllr Nadim Muslim)

“We are going to continue the work we began in 2023 to regenerate our town.

“We will work for a greener, cleaner, and safer borough, where diverse communities live in peace and harmony.

“My door will always be open to anyone who wants to make Bolton better.”

Standing against Cllr Zaman was the leader of the Bolton Conservatives, Cllr Nadim Muslim.

Conservative Cllr Fairclough said: “Throughout our time in power we believed fairness mattered more than political control.

“Since Labour have returned to power, much of that spirit has been eroded.

Cllr Hilary Fairclough, seen here when she was elected Mayor in 2019 (Image: Martini)

“Today, I ask all parties to consider this – do you want every ward treated equally, and do you want a leader who will unite us rather than divide us?

“If the answer is yes, I urge you to vote for Nadim Muslim.”

Cllr David Grant, of the Horwich and Blackrod First independents, said: “We found out that Cllr Muslim wanted to be leader about an hour ago. We’ve had no discussion, no talks, we don’t know what his policies are.

“I will be supporting Cllr Zaman as leader of the council.”

Cllr David Grant (Image: Horwich Town Council)

But Cllr Muslim fired back: “We did meet the leader of HBFI so to say we never met is not strictly true.

“I think it’s very brave considering there is a by-election coming up in Horwich.

“All HBFI are doing is propping up the Labour party, which usually means higher taxes.”

Despite the back-and-forth, Cllr Zaman was elected by a broad coalition of Labour, Lib Dem, and independent MPs.

Several councillors, including all of Bolton’s Green Party councillors, abstained from voting.

Cllr Martyn Cox (Image: Public)

More surprising was the election of Conservative Cllr Andrew Morgan to be the head of Bolton’s planning department, beating out Labour’s candidate for the position, Cllr Emily Mort.

Conservative Cllr Martyn Cox said: “Cllr Cox: “If you abstain from voting for Cllr Morgan, you are voting for Labour.

“Everybody who knows Cllr Morgan is the right person for this role.

“This is not the time to abstain – if you abstain, you’re voting for Labour.”

Tory Cllr Anne Galloway seconded the motion.

Cllr Grant, of the Horwich and Blackrod first independents, also voted for Cllr Morgan.

Cllr Grant said: “Our group is not whipped so they can make their own minds up.

“My thoughts are – we do need strong leadership on that committee.

“For me, I’m actually in agreement with Cllr Muslim – I’m sure it’s going to be one of the very few times this year.

Cllr Andrew Morgan (Image: Bolton Council)

“I will be voting for Cllr Morgan.”

Despite speeches from Labour Cllrs John McHugh and newly-elected council leader Cllr Zaman, Cllr Morgan won the vote, and was elected leader of the Bolton Planning Committee.

He did this with a broad range of votes from Conservative, Green, Reform, and independent councillors.

Bolton’s 2026/27 constitution was also approved in a unanimous vote.

When John, a stonemason working at Glasgow Cathedral, finishes repairing a section, the highest praise he can receive is that no one notices. “When we get things that come together you just see a couple of wee bits of stone”, he explains. “You don’t actually see the work that went into it. But it’s satisfying getting it to all come back as if it’s never been touched.”

This is the paradox at the heart of skilled conservation work: the better you are at your job, the more invisible your efforts become. John spent years mastering complex stonecutting techniques precisely so his interventions will disappear. When all goes well, the building appears untouched.

We live in a culture that celebrates creativity, innovation and leaving your mark. Disruption is praised as the highest achievement. AI companies sell us on their power to generate novel content. Tech executives move fast and break things. Politicians advocate for glorious revolutions and talk of progress. Even on the right, conservativism has recently been given an increasingly radical inflection. In the UK, visions of reform tap into mainstream disaffection with the status quo. In the US the Trumpian hope that America can be “great again”, involves a similar vision of wholesale change. The result is that some of the most valuable forms of work often go unrecognised.

“There is a kind of love, called maintenance”, U.A. Fanthorpe wrote, in her 1995 poem, Atlas, a tribute to the many unseen acts that keep our domestic lives going. From paying bills, to home maintenance and the small acts of kindness that sustain filial relations, she highlights this “sensible side of love”. In a similar spirit, we want to highlight the undervalued work of maintaining and retaining what matters – as Fanthorpe puts it: “the permanently rickety elaborate structures of living”. From the relationships we maintain to the institutions we rely on, this kind of invisible labour shapes our lives in ways we don’t acknowledge and value as much as we ought.

Through ethnographic research with people engaged in the work of preservation, we’ve come to see that maintenance isn’t always passive. The more things change, the more it takes work to keep things the way they are. Often this is deliberate, thoughtful – and sometimes it’s profoundly difficult.

Discipline, not creativity

Stonemasons value discipline over creativity in their work. The real difficulty, they explain, is doing the same thing over and again: staving off boredom, keeping your mind on the task, carrying on when your fingers are numb with cold, repeating the same action, even when threatened with distraction.

Conservation architects describe their work in similar terms. One, who works for the national conservation agency in Scotland, contrasted his current role with previous work as a commercial architect. “Humility matters,” he said. “It’s important that you try and just ease back, because if you are quite an egotistical person, then that can cloud your decisions … you’ll cloud that by actually saying, ‘me, here’s my mark on the building!’”

The same orientation appears in other unexpected contexts. Think of the work involved in maintaining a functioning institution, like a school: the administrative and volunteer labour of a range of different types of people, the relationship-building between teachers and parents through parent teacher associations, the training of new staff in established practices and even something as basic as the repair of old equipment. None of that work shows up in political discourse as “reform”, “innovation”, or “progress”. It doesn’t change things or build anything new, and is often directed precisely at keeping something running more or less as it always has.

Many of us who’ve worked in institutions know that keeping something going can involve a great deal of time, effort, judgment and expertise.

Continuity and social life

The work of continuity also matters for our personal politics and social life. What would political discourse look like if we valued continuity as highly as innovation?

On both left and right, our political language is dominated by reform, progress, disruption and revolution. We lack an equivalent vocabulary to describe the deliberate work to keep things as they are. We tend to undervalue this work, in part because we fail to see when it happens. This is particularly so in the current moment, when narratives of broken Britain and general disaffection with the way things are, directs hope towards widespread, radical change. Even on the right, conservative political philosophies are increasingly presented as routes to profound transformation, whether as reform or restoration.

Preservation isn’t morally superior to reform, and this is not an argument against political change. Nor is it an argument for maintenance as inertia or inaction. Clearly feelings about broken Britain reflect real frustrations with dysfunctional institutions. Yet there is much about our political and social life that almost all of us would wish to preserve and sustain. Our point is precisely that such preservation can be active. Indeed, the more that things break or wear out, the harder and more necessary this work becomes.

Political and social life involves making choices about what to change and what to sustain. But when we only celebrate (or attack) transformation, creativity, and innovation we overlook the skilled, thoughtful work done with the aim of leaving (some) things as they are. Often, movement is needed in order to remain still. And if all we are offered is either disruptive change or wholesale reactionary resistance, we miss this.

A lack of change is not inherently a failure or an absence. Stonemasons have consciously and skilfully cultivated the ability to not innovate. Their work is difficult and important. But they are clear that its value is not captured in the language of “creativity”. They’ve learned something our innovation-obsessed culture has forgotten: that some of the most valuable human work lies not in making things new, but in the patient, humble, disciplined practice of helping what matters to endure.

Akhtar Zaman has been elected by councillors as the new leader of the authority

Labour will run Bolton council for the next year after a new leader was elected.

Coun Akhtar Zaman gained the backing of a majority of councillors at the authority’s annual general meeting on Wednesday evening. The full council met after the local elections on May 7 which saw significant changes in its make up.

Despite losing five seats, Labour remain the biggest party on the 60-strong council with 20 seats.

Reform UK who made significant gains in the poll, have 10 seats, as do the Conservatives.

The rest of the council is made up of Liberal Democrats with five members, the Greens have four, Horwich & Blackrod Independents with four, Farnworth & Kearsley First have three members and Communities First two.

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There is one Independent councillor and one vacancy.

A Tory amendment to the proposal to install its leader, Nadim Muslim as council leader was defeated.

Proposing Coun Zaman for leader, deputy Labour leader Martin Donaghy said: “The smooth running of the services on Bolton is the paramount interest for all of us here.

“I have never met a councillor who got into power to do damage.

“There are people relying on us as the first part of their representation to continue to deliver services to the people.”

Coun Gary Veevers, Liberal Democrat leader said it was clear that due to the number of councillors for each party that only Labour were in a position to lead.

He said: “We remain unequivocally a party in opposition. “It’s regrettable that we are just five of us here tonight.

“It is incumbent for us to leave here with a fully functional council.”

Coun David Grant, leader of the Horwich and Blackrod First independents, said: “While I appreciate that Labour had a crushing defeat a few weeks ago, voters showed that they don’t really want the Conservatives either.”

He and other party councillors voted in favour of Coun Zaman for leader.

Addressing the Labour and Conservative benches, Reform leader Trevor Jones said: “The people of Bolton just voted and they don’t want this shower back in.

“It’s pretty obvious. And they certainly don’t want someone who lost 14 per cent of their vote share either.”

The vote on Coun Zaman for leader saw the Green Party members abstain.

After winning the vote for the leadership Labour will appoint members to cabinet positions who will have executive control of the authority.

Later in the meeting Labour suffered a setback when a Tory amendment to install Coun Andy Morgan as chair of planning was supported by a majority of members.

Labour had wished to appoint Coun Emily Mort to that role.

Coun Zaman takes over the role of council leader from Nick Peel, who lost his seat in Tonge & the Haulgh ealrier this month.

Speaking after his appointment, Coun Zaman said: “Never did I believe that I would be leader of this great town.

“To me Bolton is the most beautiful place on the earth. “I came to this town more than 40 years ago with absolutely nothing.

“This town took me into its own and gave me everything I have today. “We will continue the work to regenerate our town.

“We will work for a greener, cleaner, and safer borough, where diverse communities live in peace and harmony.”