A PRESSURE group is calling on people to support its campaign to get Bolton back into Lancashire - through their mail.

Friends of Real Lancashire is urging townsfolk to write on letters that Bolton is in Lancashire, not Greater Manchester.

The group also wants people to refuse to reveal their postcodes to companies which fail to acknowledge former Lancashire boundaries.

Bolton was part of Lancashire until local government re-organisation in 1974 when it underwent what many regarded as a "forced marriage" with Greater Manchester.

But since the Greater Manchester County Council was scrapped, pressure has been mounting for Bolton, Bury and Leigh to be restored to Lancashire.

In its newsletter, campaigners claim people are fed up with firms which ask for postcodes so they can automatically send mail to old Lancashire addresses now listed in Greater Manchester, Cumbria or Merseyside. Members are urged: "Refuse to give your postcode and dictate your correct address. If the sales person insists on a postcode warn them that it will come up with the wrong address - and give them the wrong postcode.

"Then ask them what address has come up, whereupon you can then tell them your real address. If they won't play ball, don't play ball with them."

Today Royal Mail refused to be drawn into a row with the group and said people should decide for themselves how to deal with private companies which used postcodes to identify people and addresses.

A spokesman said its flexible address policy allowed for Bolton residents to refer to themselves as living in Lancashire rather than Greater Manchester.

But she said postcodes should be used because they were vital to the speedy sorting of mail.

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