Paul Arnison-Newgass, of Clarence Hill, Dartmouth, writes: Sea gulls are no worse than some of our citizens. A close caring community, as is Dartmouth, naturally likes to share its rubbish – notwithstanding the disgusting public nuisance weekly created on Broadstone at the bottom of Brown's Hill Steps. The fact is that I harbour an illicit fascination for other people's scrap, furtively inclined to peer into skips in passing. The nadir of this shameful proclivity was the release in Gottenburg of a roll of carpet from a skip, although being uncertain about Swedish law was extra-furtive as my son and I shouldered it along the streets. So, I have an eye for rubbish but am infuriated at the wanton selfishness of fellow citizens who refuse to place their rubbish in gull-proof plastic bags. In our officiously over-regulated society, it is anomalous that whereas we may be heavily fined for dropping a sweet wrapper, it is apparently too difficult for civic enforcement to prevent such anti-social irresponsibility – especially where the solution is so simple. Or is it beneath the worthy attentions of our local bureaucrats, councils and the regulators of society; what are civic enforcement Officers for I wonder? True they couldn't fine the sea gulls but they might trace the perpetrators of such squalor, who should be duly sentenced to a spell of shame in the stocks and on release to some social awareness camp – or better still a few days assisting our dedicated street cleaners sweep up their rubbish? So maybe we should take leaf from the French in public protest and stage a day of mass rubbish dumping in the streets – but not outside our own front doors, of course. I will stick to skips and their potential for recycling but lament the withdrawal of our local communal skip service. Meanwhile, is Dartmouth to be disgraced not so much by its sea gulls but by a few of its indolent residents?