TOO often local heroes seem to get forgotten while others who are assertive for their own benefit seem to secure the headlines.

I have had the honour of working with the late Councillor Barbara Hall who never received the MBE she deserved.

I also met the late Professor Gordon Black. Professor Black attended Durham University many years before me and served in the Royal Air Force.

A brilliant IT specialist who was a professor at Manchester University and helped establish the National Computer Centre on Oxford Road, it was he, and not the Americans, who not only devised the concept of the Black Box (which is orange but hence carries his name) but also fibre optics and key computer languages.

Yet where is the Blue Plaque to celebrate his genius?

Peter Booth, Hale