DAVID Ryder's now customary broadside about seagulls (You Say, Wednesday, August 11) should not persuade us to ignore an otherwise fairly rational moan about the state of Worcester's cultural scene and public cleansing.

Wherever you go in Britain now you encounter litter, graffiti and areas of squalor and dereliction. But there is very little local communities can do about this, because our lives are now entirely governed by an insane philosophy called market economics.

There is an absence of political choice brought about by our tweedledum and tweedledee political system, which ensures that whichever way we vote our government ignores our wishes and follows American policy.

That is why our cities now resemble South Central LA and our media presenters (and therefore our children) sound increasingly like people from a bizarre cultural Bermuda triangle with influences from the US, Australia, the West Indies and the East End of London.

Most people in Worcester now draw their cultural sustenance from TV and radio. The city's cultural scene, as an aspect of the local community, seems destined to diminish as the night is taken over by menacing, inarticulate yobs and yobesses who have no civic interest or pride, and act out the same dysfunctional, emotionally unintelligent behaviour they see enacted on one TV programme after another.

However, I do have a constructive suggestion that involves no harming of seagulls or rodents.

There are still pockets of culture left in Stratford, Birmingham, London and and it ought to be possible for an agency like Huntingdon Arts to organise coach outings to civilisation taking in opera, ballet, theatre, museums, art galleries and so on.

JIM EVANS, Worcester.