ENVIRONMENT Secretary David Miliband can't seem to recognise that people don't trawl the streets looking for rubbish to put in their bins, but bring most of it home after making purchases on various shopping ventures with most things grossly over-packaged.

Waste is also delivered to people's homes, unasked for, by firms pushing advertising newspapers and new product information through the letterbox.

If I picked up all the newspapers and fly-sheets pushed through my letterbox and dumped them alongside the roadway I would be prosecuted by the local authority for fly-tipping, so why doesn't the Environment Secretary force councils to prosecute the people who are generating all the rubbish he wants the councils to charge me for taking away?

All New Labour seems to want to do is make householders pay as much council tax as is possible and then pay extra for every other service the council provides.

If Mr Miliband had any sense he would charge the people who produce the rubbish and not those it has been forced upon to take it away.

Peter Dolan, Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham.