HOW pleasing that people power has saved 14 of the 41 trees surrounding Clitheroe Castle that Ribble Valley Council wanted to chop down -- on the grounds that they were dangerous and obscured the view of the keep.

I don't know whether it is in a local authority's remit to determine that it has a better idea than others of how visible a Norman castle should be.

For now that they have caved into the protests and lifted the sentence on 14 trees, it suggests they were after chopping down healthy trees for the sake of their own elitist notions of how best the castle might be viewed.

They might see themselves as aesthetes, but I'd have called them vandals if they'd had their way.