I DON'T know about you, but the row over a Blackburn trader being, in effect, told by visiting French stallholders what he could and couldn't sell on a continental market in his own town fairly gave me the pip.

The upshot was described as a "compromise" -- when delicatessen owner Matthew Mayman was forced to remove thousands of olives from his stall at the weekend market in town-centre Church Street.

Before that, there was even the bizarre spectacle of a council official trying to win peace by offering to buy all the olives himself to prevent them being thrown away -- which was apparently what these impudent foreigners were after when they saw that Mr Mayman was selling French-produced olives, mustard and pat. But, in the end, he had to cart his French stuff back to his nearby shop.

True, the French traders were paying for their stalls on the market while the council gave Mr Mayman his for nothing -- in response to complaints from Blackburn traders about not being included in the continental market held in Church Street last year.

But, surely, that's beside the point. For, as a deli owner, a major essence of Mr Mayman's trade is selling exotic food from other countries. And what right have here-today, gone-tomorrow itinerant French market folk to cherry-pick his wares for what they deem permissible while they are around?

One of their number, cheese seller Brigette Fagnan from Normandy said: "Customers don't like it when it's English people who sell the French products."

Oh, really? That claim pongs more than a ripe Roquefort -- of peevish self-interest rather than any concern for the customer.

And, as such, instead of being given a bending-over-backwards surrender absurdly dressed up as a compromise, these cheeky beggars should have been told to hop it.

It's bad enough that our blockade-prone French EU partners are allowed to rip up the rules on free trade on their side of the Channel whenever they please, but for them to come over here and be helped to get away with it is too galling, n'est-ce pas?