THE silly season is certainly in full swing according to your reports (LET, August 14).

The sum of £100,000 going down the drain on an electronic bus timetable that never worked is nothing in comparison to the overall picture of waste by councils.

Anyway, who needs timetables for buses -- when they suit themselves as to when and even whether they run at all.

Then we had the report about three councillors braving the rain to "get stuck in" themselves and clean up an area residents complained about.

Have they now set a precedent and are we to get the council out in force filling skips with rubbish every Sunday morning? For there are mountains of rubbish all over the town which are increasing at an alarming rate.

Yet, the puzzling part is that if the council had no authority to clean up the land in question what right had councillors?

"What a waste of our money" was another of your headlines -- on a report about the council putting down speed measures in a street and then taking them away two years later. Why should the council not disclose the cost of this charade? Have they something to hide?

Then what about the "multi-storey flats to be demolished" saga? This will bring to an end the enormous amounts of money wasted by the council through its mismanagement of housing over the years.

We are told an estate of "affordable housing" will replace the flats. But is this some other name for rent free houses?

The question that should be asked is whether the taxpayer can afford these estates.

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.