REGARDING your report headlined "£12,000 rise for top man at council" (LET, October 8), it strikes me as a bit of a paradox that only two weeks before, hundreds of senior citizens were lobbying Labour MPs at the Brighton conference for inflation-proof rises in their pensions and not even equality with European pensioners, the majority of whom enjoy much higher incomes.

But here we have a 10 per cent pay rise agreed by a cross-party committee, which for all intents and purposes will come from such as the pensioners who were on the march.

I have no idea what it must be like to be already on a £126,000 salary but imagine that a £12,000 pay rise after income tax at the higher rate and other contributions leaves £40 or so per week extra so is this not just a point, more than anything, that all parties are prepared to take stick from their wards to show support to Blackburn with Darwen Council's chief executive Phil Watson and show how much they need him to stay?

If we assume that there are 30,000 households in the borough it will cost each one of these £4 a year to pay Phil's salary.

Considering that investments in Blackburn are now running at about £150million a year, and that investments outside the town are practically nil, at least Blackburn residents should appreciate that they are getting more value for money from Phil than the rest of us.

I just wonder how many of the 500 people who have and are going to be made redundant in Darwen at Crown Wallcoverings, and at Vernon Carus, will agree with Mr Watson's 10 per cent pay rise.

ROY DAVIES, Olive Lane, Darwen.