DURING the late 1970s early 80s, friends of mine came over from Germany to stay for a holiday, enjoying looking around Dorchester and all its history and driving to local beauty spots etc.

Over the years they have always said they would return with family, and that is exactly what they have just done, but this time going home with the words ‘never again’.

All these years they thought of the lovely county town with the shops and pretty streets that always looked so clean and tidy.

But this time (in their words ) “what has happened its so dirty and untidy?

Why are weeds growing in the roads?

Why have you got a new shopping complex with such high priced shops in such a scruffy town? Why can people not park any where?

So many questions and no answers. I tried explaining to them that we have people in charge of this town that find it exceptionally easy to waste the public’s money ie: not sorting out parking issues but expecting visitors to come here, wasting money putting lights in at Great Western Road, that are useless, but not attempting to make the place look presentable.

By now we have to walk every where, (or attempt to) as every time they moved their car from outside my home they could not park again.

I said attempt to walk as the hedges and verges in this town are disgusting, overhanging the pavements so that pedestrians have to walk on the road, verges so tall cars cannot see to pull out of junctions making it very dangerous.

But, as I tried explaining to my friends, the people in charge do nothing as it is work. They will, however, spend money getting a person to drive around certain roads removing cones.

Cones that sit in amongst the weeds and rubbish that is not removed. These cones enable cars to pass, enable the buses to be able to carry on their daily route, cones that leave a space for people to have their relatives or their own car outside their homes. But these are removed as a danger by the same people responsible for the dangerously overgrown verges and hedges.

Either way, this county town is a very poor example of an English town but a very good example of where the money is wasted and by whom.

These comments were made, as I said, by two people from Germany who will pass on their views to their many friends and so on.

This town looks neglected. If it carries on where will the people in charge, who we as residents of this town employ, be? Not in the gutter that’s for sure as they will be too full of weeds.

SYLVIA PENDER Cambridge Road, Dorchester