You must have received thousands of letters about the state of our roads. However, after a three-mile drive to our town centre, I feel I must add my comments.

Last year, we visited German friends who live near Frankfurt. They took us away for a few days to visit Dresden. The roads were magnificent throughout, except for a small village we visited outside Dresden. Here the roads were full of potholes, and our friends said that when this was East Germany, all the roads had deteriorated to this condition, and the village was one of the few places waiting to be upgraded.

When we returned to Britain, I realised that our roads were not as bad as the village, but deteriorating pretty rapidly. After the recent snows, we are now as bad as the worst surfaced roads that I have seen. The dirt roads in Chile were better than our surfaced ones. Possibly one main road in Costa Rica had more potholes.

Travelling on the A1 through Northumberland two weeks ago, the road was a mass of deep potholes, and this is a major road to Scotland. The taxes taken from motorists have increased over the years, but most of these are being used to decrease the National Debt.

Isn't it time motorists had a fair deal?