I WRITE concerning the car parking charges, currently being levied at Blackburn hospital.

It's bad enough that both patients and visitors have to pay to park their cars on the grounds of an institution that they, through their taxes, are already paying for.

But it is even worse when the nurses that work there are also subjected to this extortion.

My stepson's girlfriends is a student nurse who, as part of her training, has been placed at Blackburn.

Unable to afford the parking charges, she took to leaving her car on the public road next to the housing estate opposite.

This was fine to begin with until she began to find notes of an offensive nature stuck on her car window.

A nearby resident who decided that particular stretch of highway belonged to him, then accosted and threatened her.

As public transport is not a viable alternative, she, like so many of her fellow students, is beginning to wonder if nursing is a career worth bothering with because when not being ripped off by your employer, you're being foulmouthed by scum.

PETER MORAN (via email).