WHOOPS! It seems that Addingham residents may have been indirectly responsible for the disappearance of the Ilkley Carnival advertising signs.

In their attempt to have signs advertising a tyre company removed from next to the highway they contacted Highway Agency officials.

The zealous officials, unable to remove the tyre company adverts, removed instead the hoardings advertising Ilkley Carnival.

No-one wants to see miles and miles of advertising hoardings lining our roads - it is dangerously distracting as well as unsightly. Over the years, Ilkley's Carnival committee has put up advertising signs in the hope that highways officials will turn a blind eye to this technical breach of the rules.

No-one has seen fit to complain so the practice has been allowed to continue. It is a strange coincidence that this year's carnival date coincided with the presence of other advertising signs which attracted the wrath of Addingham parish councillors and residents.

Because Highway Agency officials had been alerted, they had no choice about removing the carnival signs.

The obvious success of the carnival - due no doubt to the combination of three circumstances: the hard work of the committee, the glorious sunshine, and the absence of many alternative attractions because of foot and mouth disease restrictions - showed that the removal of the signs did not do a lot of damage in terms of the number of visitors.

But it may now be time for the carnival organisers to contact the Highways Agency and ask permission to put signs up in future years.

It is a charitable event after all and the signs would only be present for two or three weeks. Above all, it would avoid a similar embarrassment in the future.