DESPITE what Burnley's Labour-run Housing Committee has plastered the press with, the houses on Rectory Road, and lower Cavour Street are some of the best-kept houses in Burnley.

None of the committee, with the exception of the Lib Dems, who are with us, has ever been in our houses.

Do they know what they are talking about?

Talk to councillors Gordon Birtwistle, Ali and Subham of the Lib Dems. They know what they are like.

They talk about decent homes in a decent neighbourhood, run by very good decent people - a multi-racial society that gets along just fine with everyone.

All this talk of unfit houses is nothing but fiction. It is true, however, that those on Cavour Street from 17-45 and 26-48, are unfit. But you don't tarnish a whole district because of some unfit houses. You would not cut off a leg if you had a sore foot.

At a meeting on July 21, a councillor remarked that he thought it was unhealthy for us to be living near a paper mill. I ask you, have you ever heard such rubbish?

Is he not aware that, up to a few years ago, when this was much more a built-up area and an elite part of Burnley, we had a colliery, a laundry , an engineering works, a gas works, a bone yard, a slaughter house, a foundry, a railway marshalling yard, as well as a paper mill.

Will he also be moving all the other streets in the vicinity of the paper mill as we are?

Another councillor thinks it is unwise that we should live between a high-speed road, wherever that it, and an industrial estate.

We do not live next to a high-speed road - Rectory Road is in between.

Are the only people in the town, indeed, in this country, who live near a busy road or a factory? Talk sense.

J L O'LEARY, Rectory Road, Burnley.

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