MY wife and I have just received a beautifully produced set of no less than 4 pamphlets from Bolton Council.

Entitled "A Better Bolton for Older People", it has been sent presumably to all the old codgers like ourselves in the Borough.

The cost of this exercise must have been enormous.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, may I say that a more pointless waste of public money is hard to imagine. At one point it says that jargon must be avoided, yet much of it appears to have been written by a computer, with phrases such as "empowerment", "local strategic partnerships", "proactive" and the like.

At least ninety per cent of these pamphlets appear to state the blindingly obvious, and one can only presume that they came about because of a need to persuade Whitehall that the council was doing something positive. In fact, all they are doing is producing pamphlets.

If only they had spent the money on something practical, like improving the pavements or providing litter bins!

John Jenkins

Merehall Close

Bolton