HOW bizarre that the man at the Pizzaway in Clifford Street must close at 11pm in an attempt to lower noise levels (October 10) whilst in the same street there is a night club with a capacity for 800 people who fall out onto the street at 2am.

Despite the best efforts of the lone bouncer and the watching police these same people insist on blocking the street to discuss the night's events causing mayhem to the few remaining motorists.

With no Pizzaway to descend upon there is no problem for the hungry horde, as within a 500 yard radius there is a Chinese takeaway, two more pizza shops and four mobile kebab stands all happily serving until well after 3am. With so much alternative choice one must ask what the man at Pizzaway did to upset the authorities.

At the other end of the city a sex shop proprietor had to fight tooth and nail to obtain a licence to sell his wares, while just around the corner a shop purveying the same stock does not need a licence because he sells candles as well.

Large pubs stay open later but smaller pubs cannot because they do not have sufficient floor space, a requirement of local government legislation. Taxis must adhere to the seating capacity for which they are licensed yet buses to night clubs which are dangerously overloaded go unnoticed.

I wonder if the word bureaucracy was invented in York.

Alan Rowley,

Millfield Lane,

Hull Road, York.

Updated: 10:48 Saturday, October 20, 2001