IT would appear that among the few people who enjoy permanent and secure - and, no doubt, very lucrative - employment in Blackburn are the knockers-down, chuckers-up and fillers-in who have laid waste this once decent town on a scale difficult to imagine in those halcyon days before the onset of the now-notorious 'Phase One.'

That was, as most older residents will recall, back in 1964, those happy years before our capitulation to Brussels, when Blackburn was still a town - not the sprawling bomb-site it is today.

The digging-up of roads is now a way of life and we have been long accustomed to temporary traffic-lights, cracked and sagging pavements and roads and council-instigated narrowing of many roads which inhibit smooth traffic movement almost to the point of non-existence. Can the people who formulate these fiascos give the people of Blackburn some idea of when, if ever, this senseless game of musical roads and buildings will end? No 'town' in England is viewed with so much nostalgia for the past, and with so much trepidation for the future.

It's high time the people elected to control this unhappy borough were compelled to face up to their responsibilities. Let's have some names of authors of these ongoing fiascos, so we'll know who not to vote in at the next opportunity.

F BURNS, Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn.

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