What are "visioning exercises" exactly? I ask because that is what apparently planners, Urban Initiatives, have been doing with regard to Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath town centres. The council is about to reveal its plan for their redevelopment. Apparently, we are going to get to see these "visioning" masterplans in the new year, as there will be six weeks of public exhibitions.

Let's hope that by public exhibitions, they might mean that we will be able to visit a particular venue at the weekend. Not like their last travelling roadshow, which was poorly advertised and spent a single day in many different places, during office hours.

RUBBISH

Do you really want to be consulted on what the council does with its waste? How about their spending £60,000 on a Mori poll to find out? At least one councillor made a sensible comment about this "consultation exercise." What would happen if they didn't get the opinions they were hoping for? "This could happen, and it worries me," said Councillor Christine Freeman.

DOGGY DO DOOS

Letter of the week in the Middy went to a Mike Webster of Kents Road, Haywards Heath. He is concerned about the amount of dog excrement in his neighbourhood: "I have a particularly large mound of it outside my house at the moment." He makes it sound like he is collecting the stuff! "It is my right to walk down a pathway to school without doing a poo slalom with three children." I don't know Kents Road, but I don't imagine house prices are kept very keen there.

DITCHLING

I don't know about you, but I really think I should buy some shares in these market research organizations. There seems to be a craze for polling in local government at the moment. Voters in Ditchling have just decided against a £28,500 road survey for the village. Half of the money for which would have come from their council tax.

I have a strong dislike for Ditchling, which goes back to the 1980s when Vera Lynn went on the Wogan show to whip up support against housebuilding in the village. You can guess which town had 1,500 houses dumped on it as a result.

Ditchling residents protest about congestion, but what do they expect from a village which likes to deter car owners from driving through it by putting posts up the highstreet, not to protect pedestrians or buildings, but to say "get out of our village townies"? I don't know how many people find a dent in their car or lose a wing mirror as a result of these posts, but I expect there are a fair few.

Ditchling residents pretend to be country gents and ladies with their 4x4 vehicles, but they tend to be wealthy snobs playing the country squire. They may sneer at Burgess Hill, but you just know they go to Tescos to do their shopping. You can't get many provisions from antique shops and art galleries.