UNTIL January 9, two mature trees stood on the car park of the Blackburn Register Office and added a much-needed dash of colour when they were in blossom during the summer. That was until the council decided to smash them to pieces with a JCB in order to make way for a landscaped garden!

Surely, it would have made infinitely more sense to have incorporated the trees into the new garden, thus saving a great deal of expense and it would have been more environmentally friendly into the bargain.

Presumably, the council will replace them with the metal trees they seem so perversely fond of.

It seems to me yet another episode in an ever-growing series of disgraceful actions by an authority that cares nothing for the people it claims to represent or the environment it has promised to protect. Let's not forget that these are the people who have prevented local traders from using 'A-boards' but have erected ugly metal gates in Blackburn town centre that have had a detrimental effect on local trade.

Not only that, they have created a Heath Robinson one-way system, planted metal trees when real ones would have been cheaper and infinitely nicer, charged extortionate rates to local businesses in Blackburn and Darwen, frittered away untold millions on putting very cosmetic touches to their existing white elephants and who have persistently ridden roughshod over the views and concerns of ordinary people.

Now they have the cheek to charge us an extra 5.5 per cent for the services they provide. For what?

Their short-termist attitude is an absolute disgrace and it is time they began to take some responsibility for their actions and began to behave in an accountable manner.

How many more madcap schemes are they going to inflict on us and expect us to pay for? Malcolm Doherty and his horde of unhinged cronies should hang their heads in shame and formally apologise to the people of the borough for their dereliction of duty and downright reckless activities. Enough is enough.

MICHAEL DICKINSON, Pleasington Close, Blackburn.

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