I SEE that Councillor Roy Walker has again demonstrated his agility by jumping on yet another passing bandwagon: or should I say refuse collection truck.

However, his claim that he would "restore weekly refuse collections" is unrealistic since he knows full well that weekly refuse collections is what we have now! Instead he should come clean and own up to the additional cost of the extra refuse collections he now proposes, which is an estimated £200,000 per year per refuse collection round and £1.7 million in capital expenditure for additional vehicles.

He should also explain why he did not make this proposal at the council's budget meeting in February.

When he has done that he then needs to justify extra expenditure for additional refuse collections when we will not be collecting any more refuse than we do at present.

And finally he needs to explain to his Conservative colleagues, including the chairman of the environment scrutiny commission, Coun Sheila Magnall, why he is ignoring the conclusions they reached on January 13. I quote:

"This Commission supports the retention of the alternate weekly collection scheme (28,000 properties as amended and outlined in the report). This Commission supports a four-year extension programme of the scheme (14,000 properties per annum) commencing 2004-05 to provide borough-wide coverage and enable statutory recycling targets to be met".

COUNCILLOR DEREK BODEN