It beggars belief that Cornwall county council could be discussing disposing of £500,000,000 for an incinerator that won't be operational for at least 12 years! Are the supplying companies just thinking of figures and adding zeros? Very roughly it equates to more than £1,700 for every man, woman and child living in the county. But when they are suggesting £10,000 to put a "keep left" sign in the middle of Probus it shows that all the bureaucrats are out of touch with reality and puts the councillors' pay-rises into perspective.

They can literally throw money away. I am actually in favour of recycling rubbish by burning for energy, rather than land-fill, but fail to see how any council could be committing to such a huge project, with no return and such a long lead time. Let's get it back to basics, we are talking about a large yard with a rubbish tipping area, a big furnace which would be fuelled by the rubbish, a large chimney with a smoke filtration system, some sort of generation system to produce electricity and some cables out to the national grid. Your report suggests an even more expensive system could be operational in a third of the time. Have the county council actually weighed up the extra cost of this against the extra eight years of operating the present system? With so much Objective One money supporting another set of advisors and consultants would it be too much to hope that any of them did some "joined-up thinking" about how a Cornish business could be set up to build and operate the scheme, at least keeping the money in the local economy? As those in power, all the way up, are determined to build as many new homes as possible, and waste disposal is an ongoing major problem, why is there also not the same emphasis as energy conservation?

Recycling isn't happening enough because it isn't easy. Each new home should be set up so that rubbish is sorted from the outset. Each new estate should have its own waste/recycling area with an employed person (Mr Braines says there are many people desperate for 16 hours a week) to ensure its operation. Composting could be done cleanly and re-used locally. Transfer and ongoing cost would be reduced by sorting at source. I'd better stop there, after all councillors will ignore any common sense anyway! I just hope my wafflings have taken a space on your letters page, away from one of your regular bitter, boring, petty politics contributors. John G Sandys, Carrine Road, Newbridge, Truro