IT must have come as a relief to Foreign Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw after reading the headline "Town Hall ordered to cut budgets by 10 per cent" that party leaders on Blackburn with Darwen Council, Conservative Colin Rigby and New Labour Kate Hollern are going to accept responsibility for a deficit in local government funding.

Particularly when other local government leaders have forecast a 10 per cent increase in council tax, blaming a shortfall in resources from central government.

The government ensured adequate funding last year and made significant reductions in business rates to head off losses at the general election.

How many times has it been said that Chancellor Gordon Brown has a £10billion hole in his economic predictions, much of it due to the funding of a bloody and illegal war in Iraq?

All this is of little consequence to town hall bosses.

Coun Hollern orders a review of departments to include providing school meals and bin collections and tells us she has seen three people employed to empty a waste bin in the park.

The bin or refuse collectors I and many others see are almost running at the back of huge refuse collection vehicles and are doing one of the most manual, demanding jobs in the borough.

What has happened to the much acclaimed privatisation of services by Capita which was supposed to cut the costs, at the expense of terms and conditions of newly employed employees?

Are the savings being absorbed in extra profits for Capita?

It is not local government's job to cover up for central government.

Rather than blaming their own employees for financial difficulties, they should be campaigning for an end to the financial strait jacket and punitive restrictions imposed by central government.

As it stands, the only noticeable challenges made to the unfairness and cost of the council tax are made by pensioners who are prepared to risk jail rather than pay it.

DON RISHTON, Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn.