I READ with interest George Hyde's impassioned plea in last week's Hereford Times for everyone to pull together in order to enhance the future of the city and forget about scoring political points off each other.

Knowing George from our days together on the board of directors of the club, I have great respect for his motives, his enthusiasm and his common sense - sometimes rare in politicians.

Once again it has been revealed that Hereford has lost out on available funding for major projects in the city such as the Rotherwas relief road. It seems that while many other towns and cities throughout the West Midlands prosper, once again we miss out.

I was interested in the proposals for making the inside lane of Edgar Street a bus and lorry lane only. Quite what that will do to help traffic flow is beyond me. What happens when cars confined to the outside lane want to turn left into Blackfriars Street or left into Newmarket Street while lorries wish to carry on up the A49? It could cause chaos.

I live in the county - like everyone else I pay my rates and hope they are spent wisely. I have a great wish to see the city prosper and for the Edgar Street development to come to fruition. However, once again I have reservations.

My main objective is to ensure that the football club is given the opportunity to prosper in the future which means a new or redeveloped stadium.

Boxing Day saw an attendance of more than 4,000 supporters and Sky cameras for a live televised game. That is an indication of the interest in the club and the publicity it brings to the city. It rates with the cathedral and the Mappa Mundi Museum as the major reason why outsiders come into the city. It is worthy of help.

My reservation over the development proposals is that the ground will be moved 70 yards down the car park so the current boundary wall in Blackfriars Street will be roughly where the halfway line is now.

The main reason is to provide the Courtyard Theatre with a more pleasant outlook. Many people now accept that the theatre has been built in the wrong place but it would be a waste to invest vast amounts of money to try to create the right place for it.

How much longer will the residents of this beautiful city be prepared to sit back and accept the loss of yet more funding from Advantage West Midlands, central government and the EU without asking if there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we are being represented?

George Hyde is right - forget political point scoring, get off your backsides and take the county into the 21st century or preside over its further decline.