ALONG with other residents of our street, I was appalled last Thursday (August 1) morning to see a squashed rat in our gutter.

The reason for this was that the street's drain had spewed out stinking sewage after another downpour. The cast iron manhole cover was hurled up by Monday's flooding 'lifting' the tarmac and flags.

The Victorian drains and sewage pipes clearly are not coping with the increasing storms.

Concerns and complaints have, of course, been made to the council and to United Utilities. The response is the laying of yet another tarmac covering. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that that is not the answer.

This wonderful new road, laid at much expense and inconvenience to residents, will be thrown up the next time we have another deluge.

United Utilities, however, think that the residents of Isherwood Street should be grateful that a new road is being laid.

Their representative would not enter into any rational discussion about resolving the cause before spending money on a useless remedy.

Are we alone in thinking that a practical and common sense approach is to fit new drainage and sewage pipes? I know we are but a lowly side street in a part of Blackburn not particularly noted for wealth, but we do have Blackburn Rovers' Ewood Park on our doorstep.

Maybe this might count for something. I am sure members of Blackburn with Darwen Council chamber would jump if Ewood Park was similarly flooded with faeces and rats!

Thousands of pounds of people's money is being squandered on hopeless and ridiculous remedies to the drainage problems in the town.

United Utilities are able to fob people off, waste money and continue to make excessive profit while our local council is powerless to intervene. There is something terribly wrong here.

The private companies whose sole reason for existence is profit -- United Utilities and Capita, who have successfully invaded our local authority -- are ultimately unaccountable. If councillors have not performed or fulfilled their promise they can be deselected by the party or not elected by the electorate.

Come back and roll on the Joe Smiths of our society -- the plot has been seriously lost somewhere.

PAT MAUDSLEY, Isherwood Street, Blackburn.