IT is vital we get the Government to declare workers at recycling centres key workers and get the tips/dumps opened again.

It has become clear to many of us at home with our family that the issue of waste is becoming a problem – and not just fly tipping ("Take a tip from us…do not dump your rubbish", The Herald, March 10).

Staying at home means we are creating far more rubbish than usual – there are more of us permanently in the house, we are cooking more food, we are cleaning out cupboards and doing DIY.

Yet many of the specialist bin collections have stopped. The recycling centres slammed shut with the lockdown.

It is not pleasant to have rotten food smelling in the house – heavens we are putting up with enough already – and it is unhealthy to leave it outside where seagulls and rats will get to it.

Tenement dwellers cannot leave it in communal areas and flats are not ideal for waste , bagged or not.

I know some people are still getting special food waste uplifts but some are not, and, for example, most garden refuse collections have been cancelled just as we hit the gardening season.

The fly tipping is just the most visual eyesore of a growing problem of what to do with our black bin bags.

And while we are congratulating ourselves on cleaner rivers and air, we are going to end up with a countryside full of black plastic bags from fly tippers – or are the police to watch that too?

We need the recycling centres reopened. I know there are worries over access but surely that could be controlled by a postcode or alphabetical rota – certain people going on certain days?

Maggie Barry, Cumbernauld.

Charles will do well

AN interesting synopsis by Ian W Thomson of the Rev John M A Thomson’s “president v monarchy” comparison (Letters, April 7 & 10); though the Rev Thomson adds a further thought, today (Letters, April 11).

Mr Thomson resurrects the abdication spectre, but it seems Mrs Simpson had given the Establishment its excuse to ensure Edward’s departure. As the Rev Thomson indicates, Parliament is sovereign, the monarch, constitutional. Edward may not have remained anyway.

But your correspondent’s view of the opinionated Charles and his uncharted territory? I do believe the Prince of Wales has his wits about him, and, past incumbents aside, will ensure that the monarchy is in a safe pair of hands, when the time comes.

Brian Henderson, Glasgow G42.

Scornful

DUE to a typing error (Ugh! predictive text), my letter (April 11) indicated to Scorn your car; it should have read SORN (statutory off-road notification). However, in light of your reader's comment about flat batteries, Scorn might have been appropriate.

John Carmichael, Stewarton.

Baah, humbug

I AM most grateful for the various suggestions from your correspondents for treating my grass cuttings . I was taken particularly by R Russell Smith’s proposal of a mobile fleece machine (April 10), which put me in mind of the well known Sheep May Safely Graze by, I believe, J S Baach.

I guess the accepted method of operation would be to put a stake in the middle of the grass area and tether the fleece machine to it in the expectation that it will crop away in ever-decreasing circles. This would have the considerable advantage of doing away with the need for me to mow the grass, but against that I would have to give up on the Valhalla of achieving the sought-after striped pattern effect.

After some thought, I have decided reluctantly not to take up this suggestion, realising that what goes in at one end must inevitably come out at the other, so whilst one problem would be solved, another would be created.

Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.