COUNCILLOR Simpson-Laing is confusing reasons with excuses (Letters, March 16).

I am not a Lib-Dem or any other colour of activist, but I have sat on enough management committees to know how they operate and what their defects are.

The tip workers are efficient, cheerful and helpful and the facility is extremely popular.

The impossibility of a hypothetical £2 million refit is an excuse of a kind well known in management.

As Owain Gardner points out (March 17), the question of the tip is political, so party solidarity takes precedence over the public good, prudence and common sense.

Let both the warring parties remember who coined the phrase, “There is no alternative”. There always is.

K Downes, Melander Close, Acomb, York.