IT was good to see (LET, August 4) that the Conservative group leader on Blackburn Council Coun Jim Hirst, felt that the latest councillors' perks should be made the target for savings, even though it was a bit hypocritical as his party voted en masse to approve them.

However, if I remember rightly, councillors do not have to claim these perks and can refuse them. It will be interesting to see when the figures are published how many Conservative councillors refrained from claiming as many benefits as they can possibly get.

I strongly suspect that Coun Hirst's comments are just to try and show that they are functioning as an opposition group and thus can claim the extra benefits payable to opposition spokesmen etc and he hopes that the electors, who unfortunately have short memories, will forget that the Conservatives voted for the increases.

It was interesting to see in the council minutes how often Conservative councillors fielded substitutes at committee meetings - something that rarely happened before. It was also interesting to note that most council white-collar employees are on £10 per hour - the figure used to justify the councillors' increase in pay.

G SMITH, Bold Street, Blackburn.

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