Yes, this is a setback.....

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/local/display.var.2217770.0.do_you_have_designs_for_a_flag_for_dorset.php

Dorset County Council Chairman John Peake has decided to open the field to everyone and his aunt. Now, this is strange that 8 months ago, he wasn't interested:

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/search/display.var.1580074.0.flag_calls_rejected_by_council.php"John Peake, chairman of Dorset County Council, said: "Dorset County Council now serves only part of the county since Bournemouth and Poole were given unitary status in 1997 and we therefore have no authority to introduce such a flag."A small number of people have, on occasions, raised with us the question of creating a new county flag, each with their own idea of a design."We have our own flag for our purposes which represents the area we serve but it is not appropriate to use this for the whole county as Bournemouth and Poole also have their own."

It was all over the press this time last year. Why didn't he start an initiative then? And indeed, if there has been groups that have approached them over the years, why didn't they start doing something then?

No details whatsoever have emerged at how this is to be undertaken - except, send your ideas to the Dorset Echo who will pass them on.

Jason Saber says "he has still given no details about how this so called competition is going to be arranged – just some sort of appeal to send in ideas – to whom? by when? He’s using the newspaper to do it – they will send the ideas to the council?? Can they be relied upon to do that? Surely the ideas should be sent directly to the council? Shouldn’t someone question why the council isn’t doing this directly but using some sort of intermediary? Is this a serious venture, or just gesture politics? Who is going to be the judge of this so called competition? A few councilors after an evening of drinks? It seems open ended i.e there’s NO closing date."

There's more to this that I can reveal at the moment, but this is somewhat of a backstab for us.

The whole reason we started this campaign was because the council weren't interested. Now that we've got going with it, they want to jump on the bandwagon and take over.

Point to note. Both the Dorset Echo and Bournemouth Echo knew about this last Friday. Which paper ran the story? Which one appears to have deliberately not?