AFTER all the money that has been spent on local parks and nature trails, is there no way that we can now educate people, old and young, to respect what is other people's property?

In this throw-away age people seem to think that if it doesn't cost them anything then it doesn't matter. But it does cost each and every one of us through the rates. These are a few of the things I have come across in local parks and on nature trails.

1. The gateway to the Viaduct walk has had all the decorative dragonflies and some of the brass tops ripped off;

2. Bottles smashed on the paths right through to the Outwood sculptures;

3. Household rubbish, garden waste, cookers and building scrap dumped on the roadside in car parks at Outwood and Philips Park Road West;

4. Seats torn up and burnt at Outwood;

5. Fires lit against the sculptures;

6. Young, and not-so-young, trees ripped up and put across paths;

7. The pond area pier ripped up and abandoned, with wheelie bins and crates in the pond.

As the old adage goes: look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. This also applies to public property.

It really is time that people took their rubbish home and stopped saying "they" should clean up. Who are "they"?

J.W.R.,

Whitefield.