WITH new feathers in their cap - in the form of respective ratings of 'excellent' and 'good' in government's assessment of local authorities - no doubt Blackburn with Darwen and Lancashire County Council are happily preening themselves at present.

But while not seeking to diminish these achievements (pause to place tongue in cheek), one wonders whether the yardsticks of the judges are the same as those of the tax-paying users and funders of council services?

For though it may be an independent body, the Audit Commission, which awarded these glowing grades, is, after all, an agency out of a similar governmental mould as the councils it assesses.

I mean, are the people of Lancashire as likely to rate the County Council as 'good' - when just three months ago it blatantly and shamefully defied overwhelming public opposition to the closure of umpteen old folk's homes and the uprooting and upsetting of hundreds of elderly people?

That's a 'good' council?

You could have fooled me.

And what is an 'excellent' one? Is it, one wonders, one that has deemed that a private firm might handle its housing benefit claims better than it can itself - and then finds that on the day that it is proclaimed 'excellent' and, moreover, the second best in the land, it is disclosed that the benefit claims backlog is still almost twice as long as the government says it should be?

Take a bow, Blackburn with Darwen!