I AM writing with regard to the recent appearance of a most exotic creature within the boundaries of Blackburn with Darwen.

I am sure many of your readers will have spotted it as they descend Montague Street in Blackburn town centre.

It is quite obviously a creature of habit, as at 8.30am every day when I am travelling to work it can be seem basking in the early morning sunshine at the junction of Montague Street and Oakenhurst Road.

I am, of course, referring to the arrival of a 12 foot sandstone tiger, which would appear to be the borough's latest madcap venture into the veritable minefield of public art.

Not content with (or having learned from) blighting our roundabouts with stainless steel trees and our pedestrianised zones with ill thought out industrial relics, democratically elected masters have now decided to embark upon some kind of deranged tribute to the world's endangered species.

I am at a complete loss when it comes to thinking of a link between the Bank Top area of Blackburn and tigers. Can any of your readers help me?

What will this comical rabble of councillors come up with next? Warthogs frolicking gaily at Brownhill? A hippopotamus bathing at Bull Hill? Could I suggest a jackass for the town hall roof?

I wonder if, in some far-flung corner of the world, some other local authority is celebrating (in statue form) some of the sights for which Blackburn with Darwen is famous, as we appear to be doing with the tiger.

Perhaps there is a mile of discarded and uncollected mattresses and other household waste somewhere in Outer Mongolia, erected as a tribute to our borough, or maybe a model of a decaying and poorly resourced school somewhere in downtown Mombasa?

The irony to me though is that while the tiger has safely been installed in its albeit unnatural habitat (will it be scared from its new home by kerb crawlers I wonder?) it may now be too late for a genuine statue in honour of the late Barbara Castle, given the currently unstable nature of the council.

This is was the council of the year in 2002. How the mighty have fallen. It's no wonder that our neighbours in Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley have no time for the proposals for them to be "merged" with Blackburn with Darwen.

They would be better off joining forces with Trumpton, Toytown or Camberwick Green.

RAYMOND McCULLOUGH, Bonsall Street, Mill Hill, Blackburn.