COUN Dave Smith (Letters, September 19) is very smug, yet very vague in his analysis of Blackburn Council's huge debt - a staggering £114.7 million.

He fails to mention that the town has the highest debt of any non-metropolitan council of its size - plus the highest council tax.

He does not explain the debt in detail, but goes off at a tangent with insignificant facts which have little relevance to the people who are paying exorbitant council taxes for ever-declining services.

The make-up of this gigantic debt is as follows: £12 million is short-term, repayable by 1998, leaving £104 million. Of that, £89 million is the amount owed for council houses, which cost £50 million a year to run and which haemorrhages money away at an alarming rate of millions lost every year.

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.

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