MRS M.E. Hanson's problem about finding someone to help with her garden (Letters, August 12) is ubiquitous in this ambitious town of ours. Why doesn't our town council take its eyes off the city in the sky for a while and look at the reality?

Do we really want to be a city in any case? I for one don't remember ever having been asked, but maybe I just wasn't listening.

My village of Lower Darwen was one of the pillars of the cotton industry. Many of its present inhabitants can trace their ancestry back to the great names of that time. They have loved and cared for their village and it still has many of the old stone cottages lived in by the weavers. They have been tastefully modernised by local labour and are a pleasure to behold.

In the 1980s we were told that nothing could be done about the appalling amount of traffic using the village as a short cut. We would have to wait until the motorway was completed in 1992! It has just been completed and what has happened? So many houses have been thrown up that the traffic is almost the same as when they began. So if we still have the will to keep our gardens tidy, does the council know that it is almost impossible to do so?

There are unemployed people galore being pushed into jobs they cannot do and don't want to do. Yet few people can be found to push a lawn mower, even though most garden lovers would be happy to pay.

There used to be a direct labour department in that phenomenally expensive town hall. It employed people who could be used to keep council estates tidy.

Why can't that department be revived and assist in providing gardeners for anyone who would be willing to pay?

I love Blackburn and I would not like to live anywhere else, but when I voted in this single council I did not realise how soon it would forget me.

OLIVE BIRTWISTLE, Higher Croft Road, Lower Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.