I FIRST got interested in the Coppergate Riverside inquiry when I saw a painting showing York Tomorrow's proposals for a park by Clifford's Tower.

Call me nave but I hadn't realised before how exciting and liberating such a scheme could be: a big grassy space near the centre of medieval York where people could walk, talk, sit, think, play and take a rest from shopping!

Now this beautiful scheme is lost to us. Not because it was found wanting but because our city council bullied its authors into withdrawing it by the threat of personal financial ruin, (August 7).

I had no idea such an undemocratic tactic was legal (perhaps it isn't). It is depressing that our council has gone down such a dark road.

Barrister Robert Palmer and council official Robert Templeman defend this ghastly mistake by saying the council must minimise the cost to taxpayers.

Their solicitude is selective. Leaving aside the taxpayers they've threatened to ruin, think of the legal costs they would have saved us had they allowed York Tomorrow's superb plan to go through in the first place.

Robert Palmer claims York Tomor-row's appeal was hopeless.

How sad when that exciting park could have given hope and happiness to everyone in York.

John Heawood,

Eastward Avenue,

Fulford,

York.

Updated: 10:34 Tuesday, August 13, 2002