WHEN I was growing up in Kirkcaldy, Edinburgh and its folk were characterised as all fur coats and nae drawers or, more politely, kippers and jam.

That sobriquet should now pass to Glasgow as it determines to spend £3m on "key streets" to make them attractive to Commonwealth Games visitors ("Key city streets to be upgraded for Games", The Herald, February 15). While I welcome such largesse from our hard-pressed council, and while I assume it will also arrange to clean the said streets, I worry that it means business as usual for those of us unfortunate enough not to live on the favoured "key" streets.

I suggest our tourists take a wander around the streets around Kelvingrove Park near where I live. Leaf fall is allowed to mulch down in the gutters and gulleys to form a festering mass that blocks the never-cleared street drains; street litter bins are left unemptied and the contents spill over on to the pavements; shoddy Tarmac disintegrates, leaving massive pot holes; and generally it is a vermin-attracting unpleasant mess. Add to that list lampposts that are rusting away and look tawdry in streets,all of whose houses are listed, that are clearly not "key" and I am left to wonder what our council tax is spent on.

We have been in correspondence with council staff and councillors for nearly 10 years about the lampposts and have been fobbed off by council staff with promises of action (merely painting over the rust) "next year" - and that was two years ago. When we receive such shoddy responses I wonder why we need so many councillors (I think we have at least three) and why the council staff do not understand we pay their wages and their job is to serve us. Our streets are rarely cleaned and, when they are, it is because we have requested it. No account of parked cars is made and so the detritus is simply shoved to the side or left.

Perhaps our council officials are distracted and severely overworked by the lead-up to the games, or they may be short of cash as so much is diverted elsewhere to give teenagers cash to learn how to handle money while the council itself fritters away what we pay into their coffers. If the games are to have a legacy, let it be that all our streets are cleaned, the litter bins emptied, the leaf fall around our parks cleared in the early winter and the lampposts painted or replaced, and then the city can spend big on new cobbles for Ashton Lane et al.

Dr Alan Rodger,

Lower Flat, 8 Clairmont Gardens,

Kelvingrove, Glasgow.

I NOTE that improvements are proposed for Glasgow streets ahead of the Commonwealth Games. One of the most important areas to be addressed is ensuring that there are prominent street names.

As a life-long Glasgow resident I am constantly amazed by the number of times it is impossible to find one's location due to the lack of proper street naming. Mostly name signs are simply not there, especially at junctions or where there has been new building and the constructors have not troubled to replace names. I have also found that asking local people for directions is not often successful.

A thorough survey should be carried out to ensure that any visitors to Glasgow who choose to come by car or hire a car here are able to establish their route easily without the need for satnav devices.

Nigel Dewar Gibb,

15 Kirklee Road, Glasgow.