WHAT makes Blackburn with Darwen Council imagine that vandals are exclusively car owners?

Surely, that is the supposition behind their refusal to lock the gates of the routinely-wrecked old Blackburn Cemetery off Whalley New Road.

A council spokesman said this week: "People say we should lock the gates, but then others say they don't have access, so we block vehicle access at night and keep pedestrian access available at all times."

So while vandals on foot are free to carry on their mischief, those with vehicles are apparently deterred or inconvenienced.

What nonsense! You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the culprits are car-less feckless kids short of a good hiding -- and the sort of hounding that relatives of the cemetery's dead have a right to expect, no matter how "forgotten" are the many buried in a spot that is used and visited less and less as the years go by.

There should, after all, be zero tolerance for the vandalism of any cemetery and maximum respect for the memory of those interred there -- something that the council is manifestly failing to maintain.

Nor is there much worth in the excuse that the cemetery is too vast to be monitored by patrols. The vandalism problem could be solved at a stroke if the place was locked at night and given over to half a dozen hungry rottweilers.