SO, El Caudillo, head of the junta, delivers a stinging riposte to your Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

It is a little bit self-righteous of us, says Malcolm Doherty, leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council, to lecture them about their decision to close the Lewis Textile Museum, when you consider what we did to our former building.

"They knocked down a Victorian building and replaced it with a tin shed," he jibes.

We agree wholeheartedly with Councillor Doherty's concern for this loss to Blackburn's heritage - and hope he keeps it up by ensuring that no more of it is thrown away.

Yes, we, too, lament the demolition of the fine old Telegraph building although we might cavil at its replacement being described as a tin shed.

But, unlike Coun Doherty, with his influence over the future of the Lewis museum, we, alas, had none over the fate of our old building - owned, as we then were, by a multi-national company controlled in Canada and run by a long-gone management who have nothing to do with us now.

Yet, if he disapproves of their decision, as we do, perhaps he will explain why the council he now heads approved not only the decision to knock down the old Telegraph - which no-one wanted to buy - but also gave consent for the "tin shed"?

And, as a member of the council at the time, it would seem that Coun Doherty had more of a hand in what he now deplores than we did.

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