IF, among the several gongs won by Blackburn with Darwen in the relatively short time it has had self-run unitary status, there is the prestigious Council of the Year award, it can be assumed that it is doing much right much of the time.

Why, then, need it worry so about its reputation -- to the extent that it has actually contemplated setting up a department to quash rumours and misleading information about what it is up to?

And, above all, when resources in local government are so under pressure, why even earmark the considerable sum of £60,000 for the setting up and running of such a department? There are, after all, a lot of holes in the roads that could be mended for that amount.

I can only assume that rather than rumours and fibs, the unreality that the advocates of this ludicrous idea are suffering from are the delusions of their own self-importance that independent status has evidently fostered.

We have seen it before --remember a few years go when they were jacking up their allowances like billy-oh and among their excuses was the notion that as unitary councillors they would not only be taking much more important decisions, they would also suffer greater criticism?

If they are, therefore, already being paid for having their feelings hurt from time to time, what is the excuse for setting up a department to ensure they are not unfairly criticised?

None that I can see. But is there not much more to all this than debunking false or foul propaganda so that the council is thought well of?

Namely, painting a permanently rosy picture so that the party in power stays in power? If so, should not the ruling Labour Party and not council tax payers fork out for spin doctors whose brief is steeped in political motives?

This idea is not only outrageous, it is immoral, indefensible -- and, if the council is doing such a good job as we are told, completely unnecessary anyway.

THOUGH my experience of skateboarding is limited to the observation that participants all seem to look and dress like Harry Enfield's teenage-moron character, Kevin, and seek to impose their noisy and dangerous pastime on highly-public places, I cannot understand why a council should pander to them.

Not when, as Burnley Council apparently acknowledges in seeking to stop them using the Bandstand in town-centre St James' Street, they behave like yobs.

There, the plan was to deter them and ensure the safety of shoppers by erecting a £6,500 fence around the structure. Now, after second-thoughts that it might spoil the look of the place, consideration is being given to putting down a skateboard-hostile surface and by-laws to control this puerile pastime in certain parts of Burnley.

I would have thought that hauling a few selfish bandstand boarders to court on breach of the peace charges and having them bound over would work better.

But if Burnley Council can see they are anti-social yobs who should be deterred, why on earth are they throwing £236,000 at them -- with plans for a skateboard facility at Queen's Park?

Are they the sorts who warrant rewarding at such huge public expense -- especially when the council is so skint that it is cutting grants to voluntary groups who are serving the community rather than annoying and endangering it like this lot.