THE once-proud town of Blackburn has finally hit rock bottom.

On two successive Saturday mornings I have seen human excrement in the subway leading to the market areas.

The town must be the worst-controlled in the country, if the state of the place and the standard of the work carried out by the gangs of dollopers is a guideline.

The length of Ainsworth Street, closed for so long for 'improvements' is a complete disgrace, with most of the flags cracked and the road surfaces already badly subsiding, causing deep puddles of water when we have rain.

'Pedestrianised' King William Street nearly every day has vans and cars, not to mention Army lorries and fire engines, standing on the flagstones.

On top of this, certain places seem to be the permanent targets for gangs of unskilled digger-uppers to earn easy money. To my certain knowledge, one site, at the junction of Albion Street and Livesey Branch Road has been excavated three times this year, and each time, the 'reinstatement' has been worse than the previous one.

About 10 years ago, I complained to Jack Straw about the choked-up gully-grates on our carriageways which allow the build-up of floodwater when it rains, leaving deep puddles which cause pedestrians, especially children, to be soaked when traffic throws up huge waves.

Mr Straw forwarded to me a copy of the letter he received in reply, which claimed that the many thousands of gullies in the area are 'cleaned on a regular basis,' which can mean anything from every week to every Preston Guild.

It is the easiest thing in the world to spend other people's money, and the people who spend that of the Blackburn public ought to be publicly named and then booted out of office.

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.