Let's put a stop to ugly signage

Why does France promote ugliness?

As we drive through the beautiful Gers countryside, on entering many cities and towns, the first thing we see are signs and billboards.

Drive into the town of Auch from the south and you are immediately confronted by billboards. Are these necessary? Are there many people, Gers residents and others, who do not know that there is a giant grocery store in Auch and where it is?

Your eyes are assaulted as you drive through Tarbes with its proliferation of ugly billboards.

When we see some of these magnificent stone structures, castles and churches, hundreds of years old, with lovely gardens and trees, and not far away those awful signs, it makes the experience unpleasant.

It would be nice if citizens would take the initiative and request that their town councils end this practice.

Let’s try to make France, little by little, the beautiful country it should be, not one covered by ugly distractions.

While we are at it, maybe we could start a campaign to discourage people, many of them smokers, from tossing their rubbish out car windows.

When I walk the roads of Gers, I find it appalling the amount of detritus laying alongside the road, mostly cigarette packets, beer cans and bottles, and sweet wrappers.

In the 1980s, New York instituted a $100 fine for dog owners who failed to clean up after their pets. The result? It is now a clean city where one can walk in relative comfort.

Why can’t France do that? There are streets in our town that cannot be walked at night because you never know what you will step in. Time to make a law with a €100 fine for not cleaning up after your dog.

David KELLY, by email