EVEN though government bureaucracy may be notoriously ponderous, it is hard to understand why, two years after Blackburn with Darwen's bid for city status was submitted, it has still not come up with a decision.

It was almost a year ago that a "winner" was expected to be declared after more than two dozen towns sought to become Britain's millennium city. Then it was announced that there would be a delay and that the verdict would be made early this year.

And yet, with only a little over a month of the millennium year left, Blackburn with Darwen and all the other contenders are still left on tenterhooks.

Why?

It may be that the choice is not easy. But, surely, whatever yardsticks govern the selection process, they have been in place long enough -- more than 60 years in the case of Blackburn's bids -- for the most detailed examination of each and every town's submission to have been made by now.

Indeed, if this strange procrastination continues, it could impede or even sully those bids that are now in the immediate offing in connection with the Queen's golden jubilee which is now only almost 14 months away.

Certainly, the tardy treatment of the millennium bids is perplexing, if not discourteous, and Blackburn with Darwen Council leader Malcolm Doherty is right to complain. If the explanation is the need for Blackburn's MP, Home Secretary Jack Straw, to be seen to be clearly dissociated from it since it his ministry which, in effect, processes the submissions before a final recommendation is made to the Queen, then at least the government should let it be known. This is the fourth time that Blackburn has sought city status and, as East Lancashire's capital, a key location in Britain's industrial heritage and one of only two towns with a cathedral to lack the distinction of being a city, it has a strong case for achieving the honour -- and for having had an answer before now.