OVER Christmas, I was in Philadelphia. The weather was sunny and mild and so the carriages were out and doing good business.

And not a drop of manure anywhere on the streets, because they have a very simple system to collect it, as my photograph shows.

Why can we not insist that York's carriages do the same, so that we can walk the streets without having to avoid horse droppings? The council could introduce a by-law now, and the summer will be fresher and our streets much cleaner as a result.

They do the same thing in Bruges. Do we have to be so second class as a city?

Ian Small,

The Croft,

Main Street,

East Cottingwith.

Updated: 10:20 Thursday, January 12, 2006