The tensions between the locally-elected members of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and those directly nominated by the Secretary of State at first glance appear to have eased this week.

Those tensions were an important sub-text to the recent furore over the departure of Mrs Heather Hancock, the park's chief executive, and remain so for her successor.

The results of the voting for the chairmanship and deputy of the crucial planning committee gave the No 1 post to Coun Kevin Lancaster, a South Lakeland councillor, and the No 2 post to Mr Jerry Pearlman, the Leeds solicitor appointed by the Secretary of State. Honours sort of even, then.

The voting was very close in both ballots, 11-9 being the result in each.

Those ballots were secret so nobody knows exactly how the committee membership split.

But, it doesn't take a genius to work out that at 11-9 there remain two distinct camps on the key committee which has been the source of much of the park's difficulties in recent years.

Seeing red

NOT a good week for BT in last week's paper.

Readers of our Yorkshire edition may have noticed that the company variously stood accused of putting up unsightly masts in Swaledale, diverting 999 calls on the border of North Yorkshire and County Durham to the wrong police force and putting up to 180 jobs at risk by closing its Northallerton depot.

It could have been a bad week again when one of our reporters threatened to make a formal complaint when after six phone calls she had still not received a phone bill which BT claimed to have posted five weeks ago.

The manager of the Middlesbrough call centre was so concerned that he drove the bill straight round to her house, with a bottle of red wine to soften the blow. Desperate measures indeed