HAVING just returned from a few days in Edinburgh, I have realised what Blackburn's biggest problem is...civic pride, or to be more specific the lack of it.

In Edinburgh illegal parking is just that - illegal - and the council makes sure it does not happen anywhere, not just in the city centre. When dustbins are emptied the area is left clean and tidy. Lothian Buses run a service in the true sense of the word: cheap, tidy buses and plenty of them.

Then I get back to Blackburn. Don't get me wrong, I love the place, but it breaks my heart to see where it is going. Things may be happen-ing in the town centre, but what about the outer areas, where people live? The streets are filthy and the back streets are worse. Fly-tippers desecrate any piece of spare land they come across; motorists leave their cars on pavements, street corners, grass verges, anywhere, and no one seems to bother. Post offices shut all over the town forcing folk to use the place that looks for all the world like a down-and-outs' drop-in centre on Ainsworth Street.

I'm sorry, but when all the work on the town centre and Cathedral Quarter is finally finished, you could liken the resulting product to a pristine mansion surrounded by a rubbish dump.

JOHN SMITH (via email).