BLACK Pudding, Belgrano campaigner Tam Dalyell, the record score in an English Cup Final and a better deal for Bury Council.

Not subjects you might ordinarily touch on in the same conversation, but they were all brought together in the maiden speech of new Bury North MP David Chaytor this week.

Mr Chaytor spoke on Tuesday evening (June 10) during a debate on the Local Government Finance Bill - and made a number of telling points about the level of help Bury Council gets from Central Government.

But, as is the tradition with a maiden speech, he introduced the town to his new colleagues in the House of Commons, and paid tribute to his predecessors.

He praised Alistair Burt, the man he beat on May 1 to take the Bury North seat, for his hard work, and for carrying out his duties with "a degree of compassion that, I suspect, came to be increasingly at odds with the policies of the parties that he represented."

He also paid tribute to Frank White, the last Labour MP for the town, and said he hoped to continue the tradition of both MPs of being re-elected three times.

Mr Chaytor gave his new colleagues an introduction to Bury, and its achievements both on the fields of football and food.

"My constituency will be well-known to many honourable members for two things above all: its black puddings and its football club," he said.

And he noted that black puddings, once the staple diet of the industrial north, were now the trendy food on the tables of haute cuisine. And he was quick to ask his colleagues to congratulate Bury Football Club on its success as Second Division Champions, and being promoted twice in consecutive seasons.

He was also quick to remind members that Bury held the record for an English cup final victory - the famous 6-0 over Derby in 1903, which he described as "a landslide of New Labour proportions".

Bury's political history also provided a talking point - and the opportunity for a dig at Mr Chaytor's political opponents.

"Sir Robert Peel will be remembered not only for successfully splitting the Tory Party in two and keeping it out of power for a generation, but for his lesser-known role as the first British Prime Minister to preside over a budget - I think it was the 1846 budget - that contained a 7d in the pound increase in income tax," he said.

"For those who believe that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce, the parallels between the Conservative Party in the mid-1840s and the mid 1990s are remarkable."

Mr Chaytor also expressed his surprise at being at the centre of "the Bury North Question" only weeks after entering Parliament.

He admits he was "somewhat embarrassed that not only did I not know the answer to the Bury North question but I did not even understand the question itself."

The question was raised by Scottish MP Tam Dalyell about why English constituencies such as Bury North have 68,000 voters, and Scottish ones, on average, just 55,000.

He rounded off his speech with a plea for a fairer deal for Bury Council, especially on education and housing.

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