Madam, Yet again, as I returned from my Sunday morning pre-breakfast walk, I'm disgusted by the litter and food waste left around the flower beds outside HSBC.
This being the first Bank Holiday weekend of the year and the start of the holiday season, I found it disconcerting hearing some visitors out walking comment on the state of Gloucester Road. This experience of mire starts around Wetherspoons as you enter what can only be described as 'Fag End Alley'. Here you can find various discarded drink cans, bottles and glasses and fag ends- lots of them. Enough to give tourists a negative impression!
As you proceed towards High Street you have to endure dumped fast food containers, various takeaway foods including chips, bits of pizza and kebabs. Mind your step as you negotiate the vomit! This can be found anywhere in town, but especially along Gloucester Road and High Street.
Considering Ross needs the 'Tourist Pound' to survive, I would have thought that our Town Council and County councillors would take a more pro-active stance with Herefordshire Council over various issues that would help to reduce the problem.
Why is it that our takeaways have such a late licence? Apparently 5am for a certain pizza establishment. I don't care if their income mainly comes from drinkers after kicking-out time. The noise generated by the loud mouthed drunken scum between lam and 3am who congregate at the top of town is enough to wake you from your sleep.
There are those of us who live in the town centre have to endure this every weekend, except when it's raining, and have found that the local police do very little to combat this anti-social behaviour.
So Councillors, get your collective thumb out of your Politically Correct backsides and start being a thorn in Herefordshire Council's side for the benefit of Ross.
If you can't get the Licensing committee to reduce the closing times of all takeaways to half past midnight, then introduce a charge on town centre pubs and takeaways to cover the cost of keeping the town clean for Sunday mornings.
The real culprits are the selfish, thick and ignorant scumbags who cause all of these problems in the first place. However if you remove 'magnet', you remove the opportunity for them to be so squalid.
For this town to survive it has to be more attractive to tourists and shoppers alike. No easy task!
David Smith, Ross