The John Blunt column

REMEMBER the report last month that showed Blackburn's streets were in such a rotten state that the council was paying out nearly £467,000 a year in compensation to people tripping up and having accidents on them?

And who can forget that continual bleat about Lancashire's crumbling schools which, we are told, will take 400 years to repair at current spending levels?

But all we hear from local government are wails about "lack of resources" and scrooge governments who won't give them more.

Yet what of the disclosure that, in the last six years alone, councils have poured resources that are enough to repair every school in the country and bring every one of their roads up to scratch into something else - letting staff sit on their backsides at home on early retirement?

It surely is a huge scandal. According to the independent public spending watchdog, the Audit Commission, it has cost the taxpayer £5.7billion a year since 1991.

Worse than that, it is not just a huge misapplication of money. It is a huge fiddle.

For, unlike the tax-paying sloggers in the private sector whose company pensions are seriously docked if they quit before time, thousands of already well-paid white-collar town hall staff either get no pension penalty or have bogus extra years added to their real length of service to boost their pension. Is it any wonder they are all jumping on this bent gravy train? Now, only one in four council employees is staying on until 65.

Who pays? You do. Twice over - in taxes and in having to drive on clapped-out roads, sending your children to a slum school or having to suffer some other reduced service.

But, of course, I am being unkind, aren't I? So many of these early-retirees are suffering from "ill health" - almost 40 per cent signed off with a magic sick note last year - that it is a mystery to me why the government isn't issuing health warnings about the risk of working in the town hall in the same way that it does about smoking.

It is a mystery, too, how many of these prematurely pensioned-off sufferers routinely recover to come back as consultants or, like the now-rumbled, stressed-out teachers on early retirement, get a second wind that lets them back "on supply" into the classroom at more than £100 a day, frequently to teach subjects they know little about.

But rather than just ordering a screeching halt to this scandal, the government should be insisting that the taxpayers get their money back. They are currently subsidising the incomes of thousands of ex-public employees who are drawing inflated pensions on the strength of years they never worked and contributions they never made - and that, surely, is a form of robbery, if not fraud.

No cheers for bossy Labour

HOUNDED almost everywhere these days, smokers may yet find that their traditional haven, the pub, is the next place from which the bossy government wants them banned. Ministers at the Department of Health have begun discussions with the Health and Safety Executive on the extra powers needed to enable inspectors to enforce a smoking ban where employees of pubs and clubs are exposed to the risk of passive smoking.

Whether or not there is a health risk from passive smoking is by the by, what narks me is the ridiculous assumption that people who work in pubs or clubs are being involuntarily exposed to cigarette smoke.

Surely, anyone who works behind a bar knows and, more importantly, accepts that they will be.

POOR old Humphrey, the Downing Street cat - he's probably the first tom ever to get the chop from a spin doctor.

Officially, the old lad, eight years in residence at No.10, is being packed off to a new home in the suburbs for a quieter life and the good of his health.

But those of us who recall that hurried cat-cuddling photo session by Cherie Blair when, last summer, the country played pop over reports that the new mistress there wanted him out may wonder whether it's Mrs Blair's interests or Humphrey's that now have priority. And whether the need for Humphrey to tail it to the country is nowt but a spun tale.

Spice bubble bursting - at last

BOOED in Spain, snubbed by fans in Italy and beset by rumours that they are splitting up after sacking their manager, are the Spice Girls on the slide?

I don't know. But I hope so.

For if ever there was a manufactured phenomenon where triviality has triumphed over talent, it was this artificial bunch of over-hyped caterwaulers.

Mind you, it could never last. Pop groups, even those with flair, generally have a short shelf life.

But if the Spice Girl bubble is beginning to burst somewhat sooner than expected, hooray for that - people have been thoroughly over-dosed on this so-called Girl Power rubbish and sickened by the group's greedy merchandising.

Besides which, they never were a patch on the Beverley Sisters anyway.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper

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