HAVE we really got just three weeks to save Lancaster from gridlock?

That's what local MP, Hilton Dawson claims. And he would know, after all it is his party colleagues who hold the fate of our city in their hands.

Depending on who you speak to, Hilton has conned the Greens or been played like a harp. He's been politically naive or politically astute. He's seen the light or been consumed by darkness!

Whatever your point of view, you can't deny that Hilton has come a long way. This paper likes to thing that he has done so for all the right reasons.

He seems to have persuaded many of his party colleagues, but he now has one final hurdle to jump.

Labour dominated Lancashire County Council (the other people you voted for on general election day, remember?) holds the fate of our area in its hands.

The county has, previously, been bypass mad. They put forward the western scheme, in spite of considerable evidence suggesting the northern road would be a better bet.

Hilton's Pauline conversion on the road to Heysham needs to be repeated by some of the most senior Lancashire Labour apparatchiks -- people who just a few months ago were asking for your votes on the back of an unreconstructed pro-road manifesto.

That manifesto certainly didn't help Bob Clark, who lost his Lancaster City seat, which will be blighted more than most by the bypass, to the Green party.

Despite the importance of that august body (let's not forget they are in charge of the Local Education Authority, waste disposal etc as well as transport) how many of our esteemed county councillors could you name?

Their silence over this particular issue has, in recent weeks, been particularly deafening.

Are they going to press ahead with what everyone now seems to acknowledge is a dead parrot of a scheme or are they going to go on a wing and a prayer to the Government in the hope that they will buck the trend and fund the road?

More importantly, is anyone going to give us a clue before the November 15 'D-day?'

So, come on then Cllrs Stanley, Penney, Yates, Henig and Thornton put pen to paper and get in touch. And don't do what your city council colleagues do by running to their chosen organ of propaganda and helping them dance to our tune. You know the address.

Speaking of the city council. It's all our fault, apparently. You know, everything. It's down to the Citizen (obviously) that Labour is having a hard time over their decision to throw their hands up in the air and say.

So said Cllr Abbott Brynning (one of our finest) at a recent question time event for councillors. He pointed out that 'some sections of the media' (could he mean us?) had 'taken great pleasure' in exposing Labour's discomfort over the decision to drop out of the cabinet.

Since we were the only paper to give the issue any prominence until Labour's lackeys shut the stable door the other week, I think so.

Perhaps Abbott ought to consider the possibility that the reason a Labour supporter saw fit to take them to task was that 'we won't play because we don't like the MBIs' is a position that looks just as daft to the ordinary punter as it does to the serious local press.