Happily, a letter printed in your columns can attract jeers. This is democracy.

For example, whenever I express doubts about the bolting together of a Tesco shed next to St Andrew's church in Hove, there is invariably a reply from Councillor Simon Battle to deride my notion that we would be better served by a mixed use of the site - to include much-needed housing alongside a store (or stores), small offices and, for example, a cinema. Any car park could be subterranean.

We could have had something which resembles the congenial pedestrianisation in the middle of Chichester.

This could have eased Brighton and Hove City Council's financial crisis.

The surveyors FPD Savills have just reported that, for the past five years, investment in mixed-use developments has outperformed single-use by 20 per cent.

The opportunity which has been lost will echo down the years as surely as the Brighton Centre, Bartholomew Square, the Goldstone site and so on.

But what do any of us know? We only live here.

-Christopher Hawtree, Hove