THE council-backed Summerbreeze open air concerts should have come with an official health warning when they deafened Morecambe this weekend with ear-splitting performances which blasted noise into homes all over the resort until midnight.

Residents must have experienced some of the highest decibel levels of noise ever recorded and should have been told: these concerts can seriously damage your hearing!

Did anyone from the council's noise pollution team monitor these whopping levels? Or were they, as I was told, all away for the weekend?

How can the council expect the public to take it seriously in dealing with excessive noise from irresponsible, selfish neighbours when it permits a weekend of concerts which caused this deafening bombardment of noise? The effect was quite shattering and no doubt this entertainment was funded from the public purse. It is a disgrace that no attempt appears to have been made to control noise levels. Ignoring the public seems to be the hallmark of this discredited, autocratic council with its ill-disguised contempt for ordinary people. The ruling clique at the town hall have dismissed repeatedly calls for public inquiry into blunders like Blobby... but the public will have its say at the next local elections when hopefully, many of our smug, arrogant decision makers will be kicked out.

A potentially bigger disaster than Blobby is the appalling redevelopment of the promenade. This area is still, after two years, a giant building site and visitors are appalled at the delays and the mess. Even when completed the result will cripple the resort. Traffic calming measures have had the reverse effect than was intended, causing anger, frustration and dismay. The main promenade road has been narrowed to a toy track. Many villages have a bigger road running through then than Morecambe and parking costs have soared to the level of a major city... without the attractions to draw visitors.

This rotten council has blighted Lancaster with its crazy parking schemes and now it has inflicted a similar disaster on Morecambe. The public, I am sure, have now woken up to this shocking administration. Now is the time for a full and public inquiry.

Deafened,

Nelson St,

Morecambe

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