SPECTATOR has received a plea for help from the leader of Richmondshire District Council after an April Fool joke in a community newsletter was taken seriously.

This month's issue of the Upper Wensleydale Newsletter - an otherwise excellent and well-read publication - carried a spoof report on the proposed introduction of Ken Livingstone-style congestion charging at Hawes.

Motorists, the writer claimed, would have to pay a fiver simply to drive through the town.

"Lots of people took it seriously and took it up with the county council, although the article points the finger at the district council," said Coun Blackie, in whose ward the newsletter circulates. "I have even been manhandled as I walked through the streets of Hawes!

"Can the D&S Times please let people know it was an April Fools' Day joke."

We are happy to oblige.

Way out for GPs

EMPLOYERS who query a sick note with the employee's GP are being "met by a slow turn around and little co-operation, indicating a lack of support from many GPs towards employers" according to George Cowcher, chief executive of the North-East Chamber of Commerce.

Two points, Mr Cowcher.

One: if the sick note seems dodgy, the GP may have given it to get a truculent patient out of the surgery and doesn't want that patient storming back in because he's had a sticky interview with his boss about his state of health.

Two: GPs do have other things to do, many of them far more important than getting in touch quickly with an employer who needs assurances that Fred in the loading bay really does have a bad back.

Butterknowle blues

Housing developers often struggle to come up with names for their new estates.

Sometimes they seek the help of local councillors, sometimes they simply pick something anodyne and bland, Oakwood Park, The Clovers, Treetops and such like.

At Castle Eden, the firm responsible for developing the site of the closed brewery has come up with the rather more imaginative Butterknowle Green - a reference to the bitter orginally brewed with great success by John Constable at the Butterknowle Brewery but then brewed at Castle Eden when Constable's enterprise went belly up and the Castle Eden Brewery was taken over from Whitbread by a regional management buyout

The only problem is that Butterknowle Green - just a spit from Peterlee - is some 20-odd miles from Butterknowle proper in Teesdale.

Spectator suspects this spells trouble for the Post Office and residents.