CREATED through its own diktat, Blackburn Council's bombastic and dictatorial attitude over shops' A-boards has made the town's own Alamo, with orders given that no quarter is to be shown to the traders.

What kind of lemmings are these people - who have already all but destroyed the market?

Councillor Dave Harling (Letters, July 14) speaks somewhat ambiguously about advertising signs being mounted on buildings 'as in days gone by.'

I suggest he looks at photographs of bygone Blackburn taken, say, around the turn of the century. He will see plenty of pavement displays and A-boards outside the shops - and that was at a time when people did use the footpaths instead of doing out-of-town shopping.

But what he will not see is the cumbersome paraphernalia that clutters the town's footpaths now - road signs on poles in the middle of the pavement, wheelie bins, salt bins, telephone and cable TV boxes, gates across pedestrian walkways and more useless obstructions imposed by council decree.

If Coun Harling is concerned about accidents being caused by A-boards, will he tell us whether the council has issued the blind with some form of sonar or radar so that they may pass without hindrance through all the obstacles placed in their way by his cronies at the town hall?

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.

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