YOUR correspondent who criticised Blackburn with Darwen's inadequate refuse collection scheme has my sympathy and, no doubt, that of the majority of those people who have to suffer fortnightly refuse collections. Recycling has my full support and I cannot understand why only a section of the borough is asked to be environmentally friendly.

However, I feel sorry for families with small children who have to fit two weeks' rubbish into one wheelie bin.

Where I live, fewer than one in four households has enough cardboard to justify putting out a plastic bag and the refuse collectors seem to have an easy time. Perhaps they are given alternative tasks to perform.

If it costs money to extend recycling to all households and to restore refuse collections to their historic frequency, so be it. Our profligate leaders can attract funds to erect unwanted works of art.' They can also finance harebrained schemes to bring Blackburn's (and in the near future Darwen's) roads to a standstill.

I would suggest a public meeting at which citizens could freely air their views.

Unfortunately, freedom of speech is not popular. I served on the Citizens Panel' and found consultations' frustrating.

The agenda was set so as to stifle criticism and I felt that we were being used to give the impression that democracy was at work.

Even when a group of auditors came to assess the standard of the local authority, they seemed to have a fixed agenda.

That's why Blackburn with Darwen has the "finest council in Britain."

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