IT really is incredible that the people in local government charged with keeping town centres thriving have also glued themselves to a policy of driving shoppers away.

But now we see the "Car - bad. Bus - good" mantra, that they evidently chant in their council offices, being taken to a ludicrous extreme in Blackburn.

For a project to build a £2 million store on a prime town-centre site is now in jeopardy because the council has told the developers they must substantially cut down on the number of car parking places in their plan.

And this, we hear, is because now-independent Blackburn with Darwen inherited a policy from the County Council which restricted parking at planned developments to encourage more use of public transport.

The effect of that is, of course, only to make motorist unwelcome - and drive them to the car-friendly out-of-town developments that sap town-centre trade and prosperity.

There is, of course, a note of panic in the town's planning chief's disclosure that the policy is receiving attention because "we don't want to be losing good developments."

Darned right they don't.

But as they are gripped by their anti-car mania - manifested by policies like this and the traffic-calming explosion - they ought to realise its ill-effects and unworkability while the poor quality of public transport makes it such a rejected alternative.

And if councillors want a measure of voters' opinion on this, they need only look at the electoral fate a week ago of East Lancashire's arch anti-car zealot, Hyndburn council chief George Slynn - told to get on his bike.

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