CLLR Jude Butt’s letter (Daily Echo March 7), and fellow councillor will see in their office that a cheque for £21 for garden waste collection 2012/13 is from my home in Glen Road and rub their hands and think ‘caught another one’, but I can assure them this one, and many others will be under strong protest.

Myself, aged over 85, enjoys at least two hours gardening daily throughout the year but hates driving, a wife that can’t be left alone, so there is no way I will be able to drive to a depot for garden waste disposal, so I am forced to participate in the scheme to have it collected.

The article states that in the Dolphin Centre people you spoke to say it was a ‘good thing’, but you had a survey before your decision to charge and 60 per cent were against. Did they also think it was a ‘good thing’?

You also say that nobody should expect something for nothing – this is a disgusting accusation as a large part of council tax is for refuse disposal which has always included garden waste.

To answer a question, why so few have signed up so far? You state that it only requires 8,000 to break even.

At £21 that is £168,000, so if you sign up only half the households, approximately 33,000 (surely the minimum for a moral success) at the eventual annual rate of £31 you will have a surplus of £850,000 over expenses. ‘Del Boy’ would call this ‘a nice little earner’.

Is it right that gardeners should subsidise all other ratepayers with £850,000, and even then the other 33,000 of households will have no garden waste collection, and those that pay will now lose their collection during the winter.

As a Tory I have the feeling that I have been ‘mugged by my grannie’.

KEN ADAMS, Glen Road, Poole