Here are some of the comments about the questionnaire on the future of the pools from people living near the Barbican Pool when I was out in the community recently.

"This has been written to get the answers the council wants, not to pose the questions the people want to answered." This is from someone who has studied questionnaire-writing as part of a Master of Arts degree.

"This is not a questionnaire. We have to compile questionnaires at work - and this just is not a questionnaire."

"Where can I show my support for school swimming?"

"The words 'fitness swimming' can put people off. There should be an option for recreational swimming, and a traditional pool."

"This is very hard to understand. Why can't I just be asked about the future of swimming?"

"These three places aren't leisure centres - they are swimming pools, one with a leisure centre attached, so I can't answer these questions."

"While I'd like to put more than three options at the Barbican to show support for existing facilities, most of the options are meaningless for the Yearsley and Edmund Wilson pools."

These comments speak volumes. Charlie Croft, acting director of leisure, told me that if people want to vote for a 'rectangular pool' they should vote for 'fitness swimming'.

Why does the questionnaire, which cost just under £7,000, not make this clear, instead of presenting people with what Harry Gration, on Radio York, called 'a labyrinth of questions'?

Dorothy Nicholson,

Vicechair, Barbican Action Committee,

Grange Garth,

Fulford Road, York.

...AS one of the 25,000-plus people who signed the Save Our Pools petition I read the recently-delivered York City Council leaflet on The Future of York's Leisure Centres with disgust. It is so biased, and the use of statistics is so selective that everyone should view this "consultation exercise" with deep suspicion.

To take just one example - not even related to the main issue - it says on the back, "This leaflet cost approximately 3.8p per York resident to design, print and distribute, a total of £6,732." Calculating from these figures, the total number of York residents is 177,157 - did they each receive one of these leaflets? I think not, about one per household seems to be the norm. So every resident is not consulted individually. What happens where members of families each have different leisure interests?

There's a "No Stamp Required" mark for return of these leaflets too. Has the council managed to negotiate a free service from the Royal Mail? If not, we should have been informed of the extra costs involved in this, but again there is no information.

The real story is that the council wants to turn the swimming pools over to private companies, who will then charge us a small fortune. As a "consultation exercise" it is not worth the paper it is printed on.

E F Johnson,

Sandringham Street,

Fishergate, York.