THE nigh-on £500,000 that Blackburn with Darwen Council has spent on public art in the past four years could hardly be called a waste of council tax, since the brass has largely been stumped up by taxpayers nationally and in Europe.

Nor could it be branded money wasted in aesthetic terms, since the £100,000 'Healing of the Nations' sculpture on the east end of the cathedral is fascinating and a potential tourist attraction.

But £500,000 is an awful lot of money. And it is a sum that a town like Blackburn - where child health problems were only this week branded among the worst in the country in a special report - could well find much better things to spend so much money on.

It's no use Blackburn with Darwen Council playing the culture vulture when its breeches' backside is hanging out in so many places - not least the thousands of unfit, poverty-stricken homes thousands of kids are being brought up in.