IF IT were possible to can the council tax system, it could easily be sold to NASA as a sure-fire rocket propellant.

For look at the shock about to hit Blackburn's taxpayers in the wallet - a 17 per cent leap in their bills from the town hall.

That's five times the rate of inflation.

And, yet, this sky-rocket in household overheads is launched off the fourth "standstill" budget by Blackburn Council in as many years.

But, really, there is nothing standstill about its impact. Up go the bills. And down go the services - to the extent that the town cannot even afford to open its acclaimed museum in the mornings any more. It's the old less-for-more syndrome that is the familiar story of local government finance.

But where does the blame lie? With the government, says the ruling Labour group on the council.

Indeed so. For it is an inescapable fact that, simply to "stand still," the council must absorb a £1million cut in funding from central government and pass the consequences on to the taxpayer with a rise of five-times-inflation magnitude.

Nonetheless, despite these stringencies, the Labour group's proclivity for spending all the way up to the capping limit - when some of the economies suggested by the Tories might have been given consideration - begs the question of what the council tax rise might have been if there was no capping restraint.

But, as ever, caught between the government's cuts and the councillors' itch to spend to the hilt, the taxpayer sees his bills go into orbit again.

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