THE Liberal Democrats on Labour-run Blackburn with Darwen Council deserve to be blessed for their sweet innocence - in suggesting that if councillors are taking away the free-parking perk that town hall workers have long enjoyed at public expense, then they should give up theirs and pay for it out of the £200-plus allowance each of them gets each month.

They are right, but naive. Ruling groups which have voted themselves such generous perks are not inclined to remove their snouts from the trough on grounds of principle - they only do so if the voters look like chucking them out for sticking them in there in the first place.

But when entrenched groups like the Labourites in Blackburn town hall do not feel threatened, the response to such high-mindedness tends instead to be patronising rubbish, as was the explanation offered by their leader, Malcolm Doherty.

"The council pays for it because we are working for the council," he says.

Pray, then, for whom are the council employees working, if their working for the town hall is decreed, by the Labour-run council, no longer to be a justification for their free parking?

The Lib-Dems have made the mistake of appealing to the better nature of the self-interested - who don't blush at costing the taxpayers thousands of pounds a year for a privilege they say others must not have.

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