I must apologise to Hilary Sternberg (Let's settle this once and for all', Echo, October 13) for thinking the protest group against the high-rise Weymouth Pavilion development had faded away.

Her letter is reassuring. Will those against this overblown development agree with me that it has become purely an exercise in making the maximum amount of profit from Weymouth, no matter how much our environment is harmed?

Most of our councillors lack backbone and weakly follow council officers dreams.

I read what Hilary Sternberg says about the mayor and the statement he refused to make.

Howard Holdings are happy to receive comments, he tells her, and there will be a display where comments will interest but not necessarily influence the developer.

Is the mayor sending another coded message that all further resistance is pointless as the decisions are already cut and dried?

It has seemed very much like that in the last year or so when public opinion has counted for nothing.

Councillors have carried on accepting Howard Holdings' demands for a bigger and bigger development and a bigger and bigger profit despite continual public anxiety and opposition voiced many tines a week in your influential letters column.

The councillors who will give planning permission are almost the same ones who approved the masterplan, appointed Howard Holdings in the first place and have consistently lapped up all their enlarged ideas. Can that be right?

An impartial inspector, similar to the one about to debate the relief road, should be appointed.

I still haven't understood the answer to John Birtwistle's allegations that the council officers are making a big fuss about a ditch here on Tophill but have quietly changed the designation of the Pavilion site from tourism and leisure to high-rise housing by internal means.

The councillor who defended that decision says the minister could call in the Pavilion development for a public inquiry?

Perhaps that is one avenue that should be explored further by the protest group. Then the pros and cons would be heard in public not in private meetings well out of sight of the public.

Chatting to some friends over coffee this week I was reminded that Howard Holdings gained the job on the promise that a new pavilion theatre and ocean room would be built for the town and the old theatre would not be closed until the new one opened.

Looking back, the early ditching of that promise should have been a warning.

I support Derek Julian's proposal for a referendum.

Just as Gordon Brown dare not call a referendum on Europe because he is fairly sure he would lose, so our council is unlikely to poll the people about the pavilion high rise because they to will lose.

Democracy is not alive and well in Weymouth and Portland.

Anne Gibson, Weston Road, Portland.