IN response to Coun Horton's letter (February 14), as a council tenant and having lived at the same address here in Dunnington for 32 years I say Coun Galloway and his fellow Lib Dem councillors are nothing but the latest in a long line of politicians who treat tenants with a mixture of indifference and contempt once they win power.

When they are not in power they have plenty of promises and sympathy for council tenants and this includes Blair's New Labour party. But once they have authority it is a different story.

One gets the impression that most council tenants are either drug takers or pushers, vandals, yobbos, benefit cheats, neighbours from hell or worse, and nothing but a nuisance to councillors of all the main parties.

Does the council have any plans for dealing with people who are not council tenants but are guilty of being neighbourhood nuisances? I am sure there are house-owners who have out-of-control offspring and who disrupt the communities with noise, vandalism and harassment. Are they given ASBOs? Do they have council enforcement officers etc to sort them out?

On behalf of most council tenants who, like me, are peaceful law-abiding citizens, I say we are tired of being looked on as second rate or lower class citizens because of what we are, council tenants.

Dennis Elmer,

Derwent Estate,

Dunnington, York.

Updated: 09:36 Thursday, February 24, 2005