ON top of all the worry suffered by his family when 69-year-old Blackburn pensioner, Alzheimer's Disease victim Allan Jones was 'missing' while he trudged 10 miles home in the rain after the bus on a council-organised trip for old folk left without him, was there not another disturbing aspect to this incident?

For where had Mr Jones and five elderly women gone on their afternoon out, booked by Blackburn with Darwen Council's Mill Hill Community Centre?

To Preston -- on a shopping trip. Preston? What's up with Blackburn? Or Darwen?

We have the council's director of regeneration, Mr Adam Scott, apologising for Mr Jones being left behind and ending up tired and distressed after his abandonment and the ordeal of his homeward hike.

But since he oversees projects costing millions of pounds aimed at making Blackburn town centre and its shops more attractive, shouldn't he be apologising for this party of oldies being subsidised to shop in a rival town?

Yes, I know that the spending power of six pensioners being directed elsewhere isn't going to ruin Blackburn's town-centre traders. And I acknowledge that people should have the freedom to shop where they please.

But what of the principle of the council assisting people to shop out of town while ploughing trolley-loads of taxpayers' cash into efforts to make them shop in it?

Crazy? Of course, it is.

But are lessons ever learnt? It seems not.

For it's not six months ago that the council was subsidising another out-of-town shopping trip from another of its community centres -- helping Shadsworth residents spend their money at Manchester's Trafford Centre.

Sure, let people shop where and when they like.

But enabling them to do so at the expense of trade in their home town is, surely, another form of dementia.