Blunder-land!

GIVEN the amounts of debt they have written off in the past, I am all for Blackburn with Darwen Council showing fresh zeal in chasing council tax dodgers.

But even a hard-hearted sort like me must draw the line at them hounding people who don't live in the town and don't owe it a penny.

It is bad enough that last week two people - one of whom has never had an address in Blackburn or Darwen and the other who last lived in Blackburn 14 years ago, long before the council tax was thought of - should be wrongly billed by the town hall for "unpaid" tax.

But what of the dismissive attitude towards Riley Green householder Michael Hargreaves who had the bailiffs set on him as a result of the council's blunder?

After he had been passed around three town hall departments when he rang to complain, he was told that he - not they - should explain the mistake to the bailiffs should they turn up in the meantime!

Oh yeah? You can really see the sympathetic sorts who work for bailiffs backing off as Mr Hargreaves delivered them the story, can't you? If it was the council's cock-up, why couldn't they call the bailiffs off - and pronto?

Then, we had ex-soldier Stephen Rompca, of Clitheroe, on the receiving end of another duff dunning demand. When he rang to protest, the town hall insisted they had it on "good authority" he was the person they were looking for. Yet, when it turned out he wasn't, they could not even be sure he would get a written apology!

But, moans council leader Malcolm Doherty, the town hall get pilloried if they don't chase debt and pilloried if they do.

Not so, Malc. You get rapped for wasting time and money on chasing non-debtors and rapped again for being rude and unhelpful to them when they complain. And deservedly so.

If you want pats on the back, all you have to do is do the job right.

Gone are the old days of innocence

THERE was a time when an eight-year-old might have many years of childhood innocence to come before he or she might actually hear of the existence of transexuals, let alone wonder what they might be.

Not any more - thanks to our soap opera producers being hell-bent on injecting the underside of life into their plots and exposing youngsters to all kinds of sex and violence.

So it was last week that the eight-year-old daughter of a colleague was heard asking her father what transexualism is after Coronation Street worked a sex change into its story line.

Then, we find actress Janet Dibley bravely quitting EastEnders after the show's producers wanted the homeless alcoholic character she plays to become the victim of a brutal gang rape and go on to become a prostitute.

She decided to walk out because she did not want her six-year-old son to be affected by the plot.

Good for her. But what protection is there for all the other youngsters who routinely watch the soap operas shown at peak viewing times well before the 9pm "adult viewing" watershed?

The soaps are supposed to be family shows. Now, they are nothing of the sort.

For if transexualism and gang rape are the latest novelties the scriptwriters have let upon to boost the ratings, they only join an already-long catalogue of plots in which every wretchedness from gay love to adultery and even incest has been gratuitously aired in the name of family entertainment.

Short of parents having the good sense to turn the TV off and spare their children from exposure to such coarse assaults on their innocence, a much firmer line needs to be taken by our broadcasting standards watchdogs - whose evident ineffectiveness is brought home by Janet Dibley showing what ought to be done in the name of common decency and family values.

Just a selfish sideshow

AT least when they rolled up in droves to London to protest at the threats to their way of life, those country folk marchers were greeted by something familiar.

A chicken. Also known as the government.

For daunted by the sight of the green-wellied, wax-coated rural Britain carping about this and that, Blair's townies came over all accommodating - when they should have told them to shove off back to the sticks.

On fox-hunting, which the vast majority of people want banned because it is barbaric and cruel, there was talk of "conciliation."

The greedy "starving" farmers, already subsidised to high heaven and upset because their own poisonous practices have ruined the beef trade, are given still more aid.

And as for the plebs' right to roam over their land, well, the government won't push it, but will say "Please" instead. Why on earth the government was so scared by this protest, commandeered by the vile blood sports brigade in defence of their obnoxious pastime and passed off as a campaign to save village post offices and green top milk, I just don't know.

But if it would form a picture in its mind of a march of urban taxpayers who are sick to death of digging into their pockets to featherbed farm folks' Range Rovers and livelihoods generally, fed up of buying food that is overpriced because of the deliberate controls that favour the producers and repelled by the so-called sports of the country, it would see a protest that would make last Sunday's "biggest-ever" demonstration look like the selfish sideshow that it was.

A clip off the royal block

REALLY rich by most people's standards, Princess Anne and her husband might seem like a pair of right royal tightwads after dining out for a fiver a head at a restaurant near their home because they had clipped special money-off coupons from a Sunday newspaper.

But I hope they - and their private detective who was similarly subsidised as he dined at a separate table - enjoyed the meal and the bargain.

For though we are led to believe that Princess Anne costs us nothing since she lost her place on the Civil List in 1993 - she gets £228,000 a year from the Queen who gets a lot more than that from us - the revelation that a newspaper offer was picking up most of the tab for this nosh brings with it the satisfactory feeling of the taxpayer not doing so in some roundabout way or another.

Keep on clippin' 'em, Annie.

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