SO Blackburn wants city status. Well let’s hope the people looking to grant city status to Blackburn don’t visit any of the outlying areas of the town.

A lot of these areas are absolutely filthy with rubbish all over streets and back alleys, broken footpaths, cars parked all over the place - many breaking parking laws - and pedestrians finding it difficult to walk about.

On-street rubbish bins are not big enough to take all the mess created by fast food takeaway shops opening up all over the place and making residential areas smell like a greasy spoon.

There are rats and mice, people are even seeing rats now in broad daylight.

Houses are being bought by private landlords but many of them don’t look after their properties, allowing them to become rundown and in so doing turning areas into virtual slums.

All they want is the rent from these houses mostly paid for by the DHSS.

Then we have shops making areas look untidy by displaying their goods on pavements. Shop windows were created for this purpose, not pavements.

Some areas also hardly have a bus service...so forget city status and get your own house in order first.

SOCIAL OBSERVER