DARWEN councillor David Fenton thinks people are being deterred from coming to the town by the state of the land around the 'Arte et Labore' statue near the Darwen exit of the M65, featuring a twice life-size figure with a bare behind lying across a slab of stone.

He cites the rubble and overgrown ground around the statue's base as reasons for its being a turn-off for visitors and thinks there should be 'something nice like grass' to make the statue stand out. Sceptical of this statue's value as both an aesthetic attraction and a fair return for £27,000 of public money, I go along with the grass idea -- providing it is super-high elephant grass that obscures the eyesore completely.