I HAD hoped that Mr Chambers, Hyndburn Chief Executive, might have responded to my earlier comments regarding traffic calming.

Instead we are given the outrageous statement that "traffic-calming saves lives" from one of his acolytes. As there are no records in Hyndburn to compare, the stupidity of that statement speaks for itself.

When you ask the police to account for the twisted and dented traffic-calming bollards, they will tell you that they "no longer keep records." Need more be said?

The traffic calming programme is as much to do with democracy as it is to do with road safety. It is cowardly and evasive for Hyndburn to say it's not us, it's a 'County Council Directive', as much as it is for Lancashire County Council to say that, 'it is a government directive.

It is not the factor that traffic calming is required that is the problem, but rather, the way traffic calming is implemented. (Listen to Ms Ather, Mr Schurmer, Mr Moore and the countless others). If Hyndburn managers and councillors have not yet grasped that facet of the argument, it is because they have closed their eyes and ears to public comment. That's authoritarian communism!

We did not elect you councillors or pay the salaries of the Hyndburn bureaucrats to be treated with abject disdain and to be dismissed out of hand. Please start doing the job we elected you for, representing the voice of local people.

The shame is that when some one is killed or maimed as a result of these measures and the council is sued, it is not Mr Chambers or the Councillors who will have to pay.

P CONGDON (Mr), Hindle Fold Lane, Great Harwood.

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