COULD this be the thin end of the wedge in police cuts? The life-size cardboard model (pictured right), not so much the Bill but a billboard, complete with back view, was seen guarding the aisles at Morrisons

supermarket in Kendal.

Staff at the store seemed none too sure what it was all about when Gazette photographer Mark Harrison enquired. They even made him ring the publicity department at head office to get permission to take its picture.

It is presumably designed to cut out crime and will undoubtedly stop real-life officers becoming board stiff on spot-the-shoplifter duties.

I guess it is also yet another attempt at the psychological

warfare featured in last week's Gazette where shops are playing classical music loudly to scare of undesirables.

Let s hope it doesn't all go wrong and we get a bunch of classic-loving thugs turning over the local off-licence after being whipped up into a frenzy by Saint-Saens'

Danse Bacchanale being belted out over the shop's

loudspeakers.

PLAIN TALKING

MIGHT HELP

A little birdie tells me that South Lakeland district councillors are agonising over how best to communicate their budget thinking to us poor, bewildered taxpayers.

Aside from the obvious answer of talking plainly from their mouths instead of out of the back of their heads, I would suggest that the public relations exercise of

improving their image is fairly simple.

It involves cutting council taxes and not closing public toilets for starters.

Poor old South Lakeland District Council is claiming that it hasn't got a penny to spend on spending a penny, yet I hear that, having had another good peer into the big money chest at South Lakeland House, they have found £131,000 lurking in a dark corner.

Delighted councillors now intend spend it on - surprise, surprise - doing up Kendal Town Hall.

Funny that. There never seems to be enough money to go round until their own house needs doing up.

It begs the question, do we really need a Town Hall these days?

The council has its costly South Lakeland House offices out the back, so should we Council Tax payers still be shelling out to support a crumbling edifice of Victorian civic pride?

Not that I have got anything against the fine old

building. It just seems to me to be a good idea to perhaps turn it over to McCarthy and Stone for preservation by

having it converted into old people's apartments.

I am sure they can find a prospective resident

deaf enough to occupy the flat directly under the Town Hall Clock and, as a gesture to its civic past, the revamped building could still include a council chamber.

After all, the majority of councillors already meet the grey power requirements for retirement homes.

February 14, 2003 12:00