THE LATEST 'neighbours from hell' story, together with 'both eyes wide shut' councils and police authorities, is neither surprising, nor indeed isolated, as one BEN correspondent suspects. There are thousands of other rowdies in this lawless country of ours who are allowed to torment practically defenceless citizens.

Another recent report told about a man who drilled a hole in his neighbour's house and flooded it with a hosepipe. As he owned his property and eviction was not an option, he got an 'official warning' instead.

It is correct to believe that councils and the police are responsible to deal with this kind of hell; after all, it takes at least two to pass the buck. And the situation is made worse by a host of (deliberately?) senseless laws.

As far as council homes are concerned, there may soon be a change, though. Blackburn with Darwen Council, for example, despite just having been given a £8.6m windfall by Central Government to be spent as seen fit, claims it has no money to maintain its housing stock, and is now asking tenants to agree to a wholesale handover to a 'non-profit making' housing association. The properties are likely to be picked up for a few hundred pounds apiece, if that.

Why would they think, though, that private enterprise could do better? Do they feel that they themselves can now hardly organise even the idiomatic hiccup in a brewery?

Since Bolton's Housing Department has recently changed the Council's repair guarantees quite one-sidedly to practically 'emergency and wind/watertight repairs only', and no longer appears to publish the TOTAL of rent arrears or write-offs, I suspect that a private company in such circumstances may already have had the receiver's visit.

So, when will Bolton sell out? And would this free money urgently needed for massive repeat pay increases for councillors?

If G B Shaw could see the mess the last generations of politicians have left this country in, he would probably re-phrase one of his famous quotations: "He who can, does. He who cannot, goes into politics."

Mrs B Stuart

Lord's Stile Lane,

Bromley Cross, Bolton