REGARDING the dreaded yellow boxes which have been mushrooming out of control in this region's towns over the past few weeks, the phenomenon is most alarming.

You go to bed dreading the fact that on the way to work the following morning you will have to encounter six yellow boxes trying to flash at you. When you eventually make the journey the following morning, there are eight of the blighters.

The first you know about it is when a letter arrives demanding a large sum of money and your driving licence so that three penalty points can be endorsed on it.

The huge increase in the numbers of speed cameras is a simple and effective method of increasing revenue. Each yellow box should have a poster attached declaring its true purpose -- "motorist tax collection point," would do for starters.

Once we establish the true purpose of the speed cameras, we have to deal with the immorality of endorsements being so liberally linked to cynical tax collecting. We need an urgent change in the law, separating the two altogether.

There should no longer be an automatic link between a speeding offence and an accumulation of penalty points. Legislation will take care of endorsing the licences of genuinely dangerous or reckless drivers who flout real laws and endanger the lives of real people.

Motorists will resent paying the fines which will inevtiably follow blanket coverage of Lancashire and the rest of the country by speed cameras.

When the same motorists begin to have their licences taken away because they have accumulated too many penalty points, the Government who granted police power to entrap drivers will face a backlash -- at the ballot box.

Write to your MP, to the Secretary of State for Yellow Boxes, to Tony Blair and tell them to change the law linking speeding fines to automatic penalty points.

PAT McKENNA (Mr), Leamington Road, Blackburn.