MADAM,

As newcomers to Monmouth, we’re a little confused?

Having spent twenty years lecturing worldwide, I’ve everywhere enjoyed a street culture of shop-side product display, cafe pavement tables and street furniture benches on which to pause and enjoy the atmosphere. This has, too, been a normal part of small-town life UK for over 1000 years.

Monmouth’s city fathers, however, seem to be introducing a thinly disguised ‘culture tax’ quoting their need to control the dangers to pram-pushing mums, the old and the visually impaired. May I say, as a blind pensioner of many years standing, such thin reasoning needs a little common sense.

No blind person (like me) would venture into public places without one of three things: a white cane, a guide dog or a sighted friend. It’s how we avoid other people and street furniture, among other potential trips and collisions. If MCC really were concerned for such folk then they would do better by removing all cobblestones, widening pavements at the top of town, filling the mid-pavement gutters that try to twist our ankles and reducing the numbers of shopping tourists blocking pavements. What nonsense! Such things are all part of Monmouth’s charm.

Is this a real example of serious and caring (although entirely misplaced) local government or is it what I suspect it could be, a small-minded attempt at introducing a culture tax?

Revd Mike Endicott

(Monmouth)