IN a free market economy, there should be an easy answer to the shortage of nurses and teachers. We should be able to offer attractive wages to recruit more people.

Not so, say Blackburn Council, our budget is already overstretched. We can only just manage to pay the ones we've got.

What rubbish!

As a housewife with a budget, I have to make sure the essentials for our household are paid for first -- food and cleaning items (liken it to nurses, teachers etc). Luxuries -- boxes of attractive chocolate biscuits and a nice bottle of plonk come last, but councils seem oblivious to the feelings of the public and waste our money for fun.

One particularly pointless exercise, which has me chomping at the bit, concerns litter. Every six weeks or so two men in a lorry turn up to remove it.

When I first saw them, I couldn't help noticing that they were about to decamp, leaving most of it behind, and dashed across to point out the rusty washing machine and divan bed piled up against the railings.

Looking extremely injured, worker number one informed me that "they only did verges."

"You won't be moving that lot then?" I indicated the piles of trash. "Oh no," worker number two said, "you'll have to get on to estates for that."

I did, and eventually another lorry turned up, again with two men, who moved the rest of the rubbish.

Now it's bad enough that the council has to come out to pick up litter cast aside with contempt by people, but what a complete and utter waste of time and manpower the way they do it.

I, like millions of other housewives with a budget, could, I am sure, do better.

PAULINE SAULL, Kay Street, Darwen.