I NOTE that new safety precautions are about to be introduced across the county to prevent passers-by being electrocuted or crushed by falling lamp posts due to the practice of slinging wires along the streets for Christmas lighting.

I am curious to know how many people in our locality have suffered the ignominy of falling lampposts crashing down on their heads. I certainly don't recall any.

Perhaps County Councillor Brian Johnson can give us details of such accidents as chairman of the highways sub-committee responsible for introducing these new, and no doubt costly measures in our area.

If he were to report introducing low voltage systems for outside fairy lights so that the dangers of the electrocutions were drastically reduced and to press for the very low voltage Christmas tree lights to be used in domestic situations then that would be a move in the right direction.

As it is, it just looked like a bit more of the nannying we get from our elected councillors - and just in time to kibosh the year 2000 celebrations, too.

Why it is that the relatively simple tasks that councillors should get involved in get ignored. Perhaps its because, in Blackburn, they are too busy in the town hall seeking city status to walk around and see what a state the town is in.

We have sink estates that nobody wants to live in; we can't even be bothered to collect the money owed in rents; we have to employ outside help to collect the outstanding debts at even more expense, and our parks are a disgrace - vandalised, graffiti-covered and with crumbling paths. What was once a beautiful Victorian conservatory in Corporation Park is now a patched-up wreck, closed to the public as are the vandalised toilets and, of course, long gone is the tea bar which finally succumbed to the vandals.

Witton Park isn't much better. The grandly-named Pavilion Caf is scruffy and sadly in need of a fact lift while what is termed a Visitor Centre is hardly likely to have visitors queuing to see it.

Recently, on one of the early evening regional news broadcasts on TV, a project was being proposed about creating beautiful garden areas around our towns in the North West and a visit had been made to Amstel in Holland to see how it was done there.

The guy introducing the programme was ecstatic about what had been done and particularly about the lily pond they had built and I thought: "We have a lily pond in Witton Park - I don't think he would be ecstatic about ours, totally neglected as it is."

So please, councillors, stop worrying about city status and sculptures of beehives, tin trees and a bare backside on a roundabout. When you have rebuilt and preserved that which our city fathers of old left us, then you may rightfully claim to be worthy of the name councillor.

JAMES SAUL, Deganwy Avenue, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.