IF YOU are a solitary member of the public, who carelessly drops a cigarette end on to a pavement, you will probably find a Police Community Support Officer tapping you on the shoulder and issuing you with a fixed-penalty notice for £70, or some such sum of money.

However, if you are Brighton and Hove City Council and the GMB union, you will be allowed to cover the same pavement with mounds of rubbish and litter and incur no penalty whatsoever, even if your actions attract rats, foxes, mice and stink out the surrounding neighbourhood.

Surely if a cigarette end merits a small fine then piles of black refuse sacks, many of them split open and spilling their contents on to the ground, should merit an extremely large one.

Or is it the usual case of one rule for them and another for everyone else?

Eric Waters

Ingleside Crescent,

Lancing