AFTER reading David Bartlett's article about our dirty streets, I have to say I feel so ashamed of our dirty town. Chewing gum seems to be one of the main problems. It covers a lot of pavements near where I live at Roe Lee and in the town centre.

I walk to work through the Bastwell area, and it is littered with food cartons, carrier bags and sweet wrappers etc.

Sometimes it looks like someone has emptied a litter bin of rubbish on the street.

We need good sized litter bins that aren't easy to vandalise and aren't open at the top so rubbish can't blow everywhere.

Young people should be taught at schools about the consequences of littering our streets.

Finally, people caught fly-tipping or throwing down paper etc should be heavily fined.

I went to California a few years ago and I was immediately impressed at the lack of rubbish and how clean pavements were.

It's high time some of the young unemployed finally earned their keep and helped to maintain their local communities.

It would be a good way to keep them occupied and out of trouble.

B CARUS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.