I wholeheartedly agree with Sean Atkinson (Letters, April 9) about the rubbish in our city.

Every Monday morning my husband goes over to the Foss Basin and picks up rubbish left - usually by fishermen, but also rubbish that is tossed over the side from Castle Mills Bridge.

It is disgusting.

I regularly walk along Fishergate to the Phoenix Pub and down the side road to Piccadilly picking up rubbish. Outside our apartment complex every single day we find rubbish thrown on the ground or in the entrance to the complex.

Years ago there was a big black city rubbish bin by Fishergate Postern so that when people walked along Piccadilly they had somewhere to put rubbish.

I have repeatedly asked the council to return a bin to that site and also one by the traffic lights.

A lot of people walk from the pubs, Novotel and other places along Fishergate and there is nowhere for them to put rubbish.

The council says there is no money to put more bins as it would need more collections. But if we don’t have more rubbish bins to accommodate the many visitors, then we will just keep on getting more rubbish thrown onto the streets. The council cannot always rely on the goodwill of its citizens to pick up rubbish.

Lynette Mills, Fishergate, York

What Brexit did for us Almost eight years since the EU Referendum it is worth looking at what Brexit is doing to our country.

The recent assessment from Goldman Sachs (hardly a bunch of hippie liberals) says that UK GDP has fallen short of similar countries by five per cent since Brexit - that’s £113 billion a year!

Our decline is all around us. Bankrupt local authorities, millions on NHS waiting lists, surging food prices, empty shops, potholes, food banks, recruitment problems in hospitality.

And it isn’t just about money and the promised trade deals that never happened with China, India and the US. It is also about culture, education and research and the environment. Just look at our rivers full of sewage and once-banned pesticides in our fields as we abandon EU standards.

Diehards will continue to blame everything but Brexit. But most of us get it. Over in the EU, right-wing politicians who once fantasised of Frexits, Nexits and Swexits have woken up and quietly abandoned their follies. They have seen what has happened in the UK.

If we want to kick start our economy then we must rebuild our links with our own continent.

Christian Vassie,Wheldrake, York Special education I may be wrong but it seems more children are considered different and in need of special education now than in years gone by.

I have two sons. One was ‘hard work’. Today he would probably be considered autistic and taken away from mainstream education.

I`m so glad he wasn’t! Would he have got a first class degree in engineering if he had been?

Name and address supplied My concerns for Julian I was interested that the Reform Party removed their general election candidate for York Central for reasons of ‘inactivity’, even though he had been dead for some time (Party sorry after calling dead candidate ‘inactive’, April 12) I have similar concerns for my MP, Julian Sturdy, who, according to the official government record TheyWorkForYou, has not made a single House of Commons speech since Christmas. Moreover, it is obvious to everyone that his regular columns in The Press have for some time been written by a Conservative Central Office-controlled robot.

John Taylor, Dringhouses, York