Britain is swimming in a sea of sentiment. The populace of Leeds is also paddling in the same pool, but with an additional ingredient, a large dollop of detritus from a thousand overflowing dustbins.

Is there a level – rooftops, perhaps – when the ratio of rubbish and rats is equal to intolerable, at which ordinary people start to realise they have some responsibility in trying to alleviate the situation?

As far as I can see, very few residents and even fewer businesses have made any attempt to improve matters. We have seen pictures of bursting bin bags piled on high, the most cursory glance revealing, for example, no attempt to separate food waste from clean, cardboard boxes and packaging not flattened to reduce their volume, rubbish that could easily be stored for disposal later, etc, ad nauseam.

I am beginning to wonder how Dunkirk would have ended had it happened today. A sea full of corpses and boats, the cliffs and foreshore full of static and shocked spectators chanting the mantra of the age, “someone should be doing something”, followed, no doubt, by a suitably sentimental commemorative day many years after the event.

The next time someone says to you: “I’ll tell you what's wrong with this country,” remind them of Mother Leeds and her bin lids, it is a perfect microcosm of our malaise.

Richard Bowen, Farrar Street, York.