How can we call this town a city when it has more in common with a garbage tip?

With one of the most expensive cleansing departments in the country, we pay top rates for a third-rate collection and cleaning service.

Cityclean is too feeble and incompetent to get to grips with the ever worsening situation. Whenever it tries to bring working practices into the 21st Century, it is held to ransom by a minority of militant trade unionists on the workforce, who threaten industrial action.

If Cityclean was a limited company it would have been in receivership long ago. As it is, it seems fireproof and the taxpayer funds this appalling service through the community charge.

I have just returned from a three-week holiday in China and what an eye-opener that was.

I stayed in eight major cities, none with less than a seven million population and Beijing and Shanghai with double that. I was staggered at the cleanliness and beauty of all public areas.

I saw no litter, no graffiti and no chewing gum. The people were charming, inquisitive and very friendly and took an enormous pride in their country, their city and their environment.

Beijing has 30,000 street cleaners and everything gets recycled. I went out there with preconceived ideas about developing countries and came back convinced they could most certainly show us a thing or two.

The Chinese do not pay their cleaning workforce well but they get a very high standard of work - the opposite of the situation here.

These problems have dragged on for years through various service providers. The great pity is I don't see it changing while the authorities allow the workforce to dictate the rules and procedures.

-John Morris, Woodingdean