NOW is the time York councillors are asking for your vote. City of York Council informed us in Saturday's Evening Press that they are prepared to spend £138,000 on street cleaning.

How many more empty promises can we expect from this Labour council in the hope that we will believe them and vote their way?

Councillor Merrett, we know you think you can fool people some of the time and all of us most of the time, but we have been fooled far too many times - but not any more.

This council promised to get on top of street cleaning last year and nothing was done except to buy 18 pushcarts and a few brushes.

Last Tuesday we parked in King Street. It was disgusting. Waste food and rubbish lay in the gutters. No wonder York has a rat problem.

As for spending £34,000 removing Ragwort, you may just as well collect buckets of steam - all soil around the roots and the plant must be removed or you have wasted your time.

The council could spend double this amount and never remove this bully of a weed. As for removing chewing gum, again you might as well start painting this is another waste of York council tax-payers' hard-earned cash.

York is the tattiest town in Yorkshire; even Victoria Wood said it was a filthy city when she visited the city.

J Bradshaw,

Foxwood Lane,

Acomb, York.

...THERE has been much coverage of late in the Evening Press about rubbish dumped at the side of our roads.

I have yet to see any members of City of York Council throwing litter etc, on the grass verges, but they seem to get all the blame.

Let's be fair. It is all down to some inconsiderate individuals who regularly use these roads. I don't know what it must be like in their homes - knee-deep in rubbish, perhaps.

Take-aways have made the situation worse.

When these businesses apply for planning permission all sorts of promises are made about collecting rubbish emanating from their establishments.

However, this only applies to the near vicinity. What about the discarded containers dumped up to three or four miles along the road?

An excellent cleaning job was done on the A1237 during the week ending March 22 when a gang of people spent days picking up the rubbish dumped by others.

On Monday, March 24, I travelled from the Clifton Moor roundabout to the Wigginton Road roundabout at about 10am, by that time ten items of rubbish had been thrown from cars.

Let us show common sense and have some pride in our city.

Take litter home and throw it on your own living room floor.

A L Rowntree,

Walmer Carr,

Wigginton,

York.

...DR Paul Charlson picked a good subject to write about... rubbish, which is basically what he wrote (April 8).

The few people who find the need to dump rubbish in the lanes around our city don't need sites identifying for them and as for finding the civic amenity site closed, I don't think, in most cases, this comes into the equation for them.

However, the Liberal Democrats fully understand the frustration caused to the more responsible residents of York wishing to use the civic amenity site and finding it closed when it shouldn't be. That is why one of the items in our manifesto is an urgent study into the opening hours and operation of the amenity sites within the city to make them more "amenable" both in opening times and accessibility.

Ian Anderson,

Liberal Democrat candidate, Acomb Ward,

Ouseburn Avenue,

York.

Updated: 10:34 Friday, April 11, 2003