IT looks as if the nouveau 'enviro luvvies' at the town's Civic Society and Blackburn Cathedral have realised their dream of banishing the shopping public's preferred method of getting into the town centre to shop.

Yes, the traffic engineers of Blackburn are to inflict no-go areas, traffic loops and ever-increasing orbitals on the car driving shoppers in a last-ditch attempt to drive them as far away from our town centre as possible.

At a presentation on Wednesday, interested parties were advised of the plans and invited to make comment for consideration.

One enviro luvvie decided to go the whole hog and outed himself as a "let's keep the buses off Church Street altogether" campaigner, while the Cathedral representative waxed upon how wonderful it will be to frolic in the vast open spaces (presumably) where all the shops used to be and where enterprise once flourished.

I can picture the scene now, picking our way through all the street cafes where Darwen Street used to be, while all the smart people of the borough take time out to listen to open-air concerts and enjoy the heady scent of a balmy evening strolling as they shall through the open meadows that surround the then completed cathedral, (completed largely through the efforts of local enterprise while it was still allowed to prosper).

Just think, not a car or a bus in sight, no pollution save that of a cuckoo as it punctures the calm with its call in what we used to know as the town centre.

Oh, how I wish that someone from the traffic engineers office had told me before I invested my life's work in my shop in Fleming Square that I did not need any customers. Instead of wasting the last 28 years of my life building up a good business in the town, I could have taken up cuckoo-watching at the town hall.

JEFFREY STONE, Jeff Stone Hairdressing, Fleming Square, Blackburn.

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