Letter : Lack of vision beneath the `dustbin lid'

Sir: I believe that the ill-fated millennium festival should be scrapped and replaced with a non-commercial, non-political, ever-green investment in this country . The "monument" I propose would be accessible to everyone, enhance the landscape and give this generation the opportunity to have a stake in our society.

I suggest that wasteland is reclaimed in each of the main regions of Great Britain - South-east, South-west, Midlands, North-east, North-west, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - for the purpose of building a series of people's parks. The design of the parks would be co-ordinated professionally but based on ideas from the schoolchildren of that region.

The parks would provide not only a green and growing monument to the past, but also a signpost to the future.

KATE RUTHERFORD

London N1