IT IS, of course, a relief for all of us in Lancashire that when we wake up in a cold sweat worrying what to do about the horrors that might befall us over the forthcoming Millennium weekend, we need not chew the coverlet to pieces.

We only need to root out from under the sofa cushions the guide shoved through the door by the county's emergency services, health authorities and "all but the majority" (sic) of its councils.

For such is the volume and extent of the advice therein - it takes no fewer than 16 tabloid pages to contain it - that anyone digesting it might feel they are being prepared to cope with the Apocalypse, not the exaggerated threat to public safety that the event is evidently imagined to be by the nannies behind the delivery of a staggering 500,000 copies of the guide to our homes. This, I learn, is the biggest mail-drop in the county's history.

It is also the biggest dollop of something else.

For it is impossible for such an assemblage of the blindingly obvious and such a profusion of pious piffle to have been crammed into one publication before - and at heaven knows what expense to Lancashire's taxpayers.

Consider this precis of just some of the tips that can be found among the plethora of similarly supererogatory advice in this guide.

Staying mentally healthy into the Millennium . . . Think positive; chat and laugh with family and friends and if you do feel depressed, talk to someone or see your doctor.

Alcohol . . . Don't drink on an empty stomach; remember that measures poured at home are usually bigger than those in pubs and think about what you have to do tomorrow.

Food . . . Don't keep food beyond 'use by' dates, wash your hands before preparing any and if you do get food poisoning, you are recommended to seek medical advice.

But precisely why any of the problems, covered in this vacuous fashion by such information, are apparently deemed to likely to manifest themselves more at the Millennium and why a whole tabloid page should be devoted to them is not explained.

But it is admitted that "these tips work all year round." Well, that's a relief. There is tons more of the stuff . . . the road gritters will be on 24-hour stand-by; if you experience a health emergency go to your local hospital's accident and emergency department and if it is a "serious" emergency (as opposed to a non-serious one, presumably), call '999' for an ambulance (and hope that the crews are not on strike for the same pay rise as the nurses, as they are threatening); and don't set off fireworks if you are sozzled.

And on it goes for page after page - virtually all of it the sort of stuff that anyone with an ounce of common sense could work out for themselves and much being what a Brownie putting in for her badges in first-aid and home economics badges could tell you.

In fact, the only enlightening information I have gleaned from my copy of this gratuitous guide is that the 80 per cent of Lancashire's police stations - even those in major towns like Blackburn and Preston - will not be open for 24 hours on New Year's Eve.

Also, where I live, in common with many other areas of the county, the binmen collecting domestic refuse will be on a nine-day skive. But - suprise, surprise - nowhere could I find any advice about how to protect oneself from the bacteria reproducing by the billion in that period as waste food rots in hundreds of thousands of overflowing dustbins.

What bugs me now, however, is that the people charged with looking after our safety, welfare and well-being imagine they are living up to that role by wasting thousands of pounds on telling people what they already know.

I applaud Pendle Council in East Lancashire for being among the two local authorities in the county who do not belong to "all but the majority" and have refused to contribute thousands of pounds to the cost of this needless and wasteful publication because they believed - rightly, too - that it was of "dubious value."

They have shown far more responsibility than those bodies which have backed it.

But if these are so confident of its necessity and usefulness, they might oblige the public by telling them how much it has cost.

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