WHY are people moaning so much about eating in the street? Are their lives so empty and worthless that is all they have to think about?

So many things are wrong in the world - people being murdered, children starving, racism, unemployment. Yet the people of St Helens are moaning about something so trivial!

It makes me so sad, disillusioned and frustrated with the people I share this dump of a town with. Is this as far as their tiny minds will stretch?

What about spitting on the floor, which I feel is a far more heinous crime. Also, what about chewing gum? So many shops in St Helens let the pavement outside their premises build up a filthy, disgusting pavement full of chewing gum. The shops guilty should be banned from selling it.

I paid for that pavement and shopkeepers are allowing it to be defaced, it's an outrage, but once more I suppose nothing will be done in this lazy, backward town.

The sad thing is that the very people who are moaning are often the same ones who let their dog mess all over the streets.

David Ruffin, Blackbrook Road, Blackbrook.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.