Further to my letter about 'Mad Max' on his quad bike turning half the grass verges in Didcot into something resembling the Kalahari desert, it gladdens my heart to see that Oxfordshire is not alone in the idiocy stakes.

People who dump rubbish, especially in the countryside, need to be caught, prosecuted and heavily fined to deter others from carrying out this antisocial behaviour.

However, Chichester council in West Sussex devised a devious master plan to catch flytippers by concealing inside a bag of rubbish a £10,000 surveillance kit, comprising a video camera, a motion detector and recording equipment. So far, so good.

However, as is normal with councils, different departments fail to liaise with each other and in yet another council cockup, workers sent to clear the site were not informed about the secret eye ball.

As well as taking away the rubbish, they took away the bag with ten grands' worth of Big Brother spy gear inside, and promptly threw it under a large bulldozer at a landfill site where it was squashed until alas, it was no more.

This debacle put a big smile on my face, but the incompetence goes on all day and every day, though not one person employed by any council ever gets the sack, however useless they may be.

Incidents like these may put a smile on a few faces but, at the same time, our bank accounts are shrinking to pay for such debacles. All council employees should be made to learn at least one bit of Latin, Mea culpa, which translates - I'm responsible.

The silence is deafening?

TONY ANCHORS Didco