IT is the pantomime season, I know, but, surely, an end is due to the farce over whether the roads are gritted as they should be when they are gripped by snow as they were all last week.

"Oh, yes, they are," shouts the Council. "Oh, no, they are not," cry motorists.

No doubt both claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

For despite the blizzard of protest about the state of roads, gritting lorry drivers were putting in 10-hour shifts day and night to combat the conditions.

But even if this is the normal level of service, it cannot, surely be accepted as good enough. Not least, I think, when a deluge of letters to this newspaper spells out the level of dissatisfaction.

We have Blackburn's salting supremo, Councillor Ashley Whalley, saying that all principal roads are gritted inside four hours along with more than a third of all other routes. But if, manifestly, that still leaves a great many untreated, why should it be policy for them not to be attended to as well?

It never has been policy to grit all roads, maintains Councillor Whalley.

What, then, of the disclosure by an old fellow writing in that when he worked for the Highways Department in the 1950s and 1960s, minor roads were gritted once main roads had been done?

What, too, of the comments by former councillor, Michael Madigan, complaining about roads and town-centre footpaths being like skating rinks because the council failed to provide "what it was capable of providing in years gone by."

The public's anger obviously, therefore, lies not just in the gritting service not being sufficient, but also in it being worse than it once was.

And clearly one area in which it is failing in both these respects is that of gritting footpaths. The council can't afford to do them, says Coun Whalley. And, in any case, it's not policy to do so, he explains - as snow and ice left untouched is a natural hazard for which the council cannot be held legally liable.

Nice of Coun Whalley to consider the council's liability, isn't it? But what of its responsibility to its tax-paying citizens and their safety? Doesn't that count? It darned well should.