YOUR last issue included an article encouraging people to get in touch regarding how to spend £50,000 improving Cowdenbeath High Street. They really have to be joking surely?

I see in your latest issue that £2m is to be used to give Lochgelly a new look. Where is the equality in that?

In the early 70’s money was spent on a Community Centre with a theatre in Lochgelly. This I notice had been extended to include a library.

Cowdenbeath still does not have a purpose built Centre. Okay we got a Leisure Centre, but that provides for the fit and healthy. What about the rest of the population?

The old Miner’s Institute had been used for some time and now there are plans to convert the disused Social Work building in Stenhouse Street into a Community Centre. Still no purpose built building for us.

The High Street is an absolute disgrace. The road is uneven the entire length, the shops are dowdy. Many are either charity, pawn or betting shops, or in fact closed.

In the fifties and sixties Cowdenbeath was a thriving shopping centre with people coming from all over Fife to shop at all the various Co-op departments; clothes, electrical, furniture, toy department, bakery and tea room, more than one food store and shoe shop plus at least five other shoe shops within the town, not forgetting Stott’s and Sharp’s.

It had two cinemas plus a dance hall where youngsters could use it on a Saturday afternoon to roller-skate to music.

I feel the best use of the £50,000 would be to demolish the lot and start again.

Cowdenbeath really needs a huge injection of funding to ever get it back to a centre of excellence for shopping in Fife and make it a town worthy of visiting instead of avoiding!

Those responsible for allowing the degradation of the High Street can feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Yours faithfully but disgusted, MRS SANDRA HOFFLAND, Cowdenbeath.