THIS week's letters to the Advertiser include a dog owner's plea to those planning festive firework displays, and resurrected concerns over the town's CHORD regeneration work.

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Happy writing!

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There have already been a number of very loud firework displays in the Helensburgh area this year.

As we are now in the season of peace and goodwill, I would like to appeal to anyone planning to use fireworks over the festive period to please think about your neighbours and their pets before doing so.

If possible, please let them know your plans for what time they start and finish.

To witness a dog traumatised by fireworks is very distressing, and as the bangs seem to be getting louder, and at more random times, it is much harder to console them.

However, forewarned is at least forearmed, so please try and help pet owners get their animals through this very stressful experience.

Please feel free to let us know about any upcoming fireworks by messaging our Facebook page (@helensburghdogs).

Susan Ross, Helensburgh Dog Training Club

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Snagging is a new word in the Scots vocabulary thanks to the remedial work necessary on the £1.35 billion Queensferry Crossing.

Closer to home, we need some snagging work on the £7.1 million Helensburgh CHORD Project.

The taxi rank on East Princes Street is 200 yards too far east. When you exit from the front door of the railway station, instead of finding a waiting taxi, you are faced with a 200 yard walk with your bags in the rain and wind to the taxi rank.

There is space available in East Princes Street, being used for car parking. Moving the rank to a more convenient place for the public would not be expensive.

In the redesign of Colquhoun Square, 14 lamp standards were judged to be surplus to requirements. The original cost of these light fixtures was £14,000 each. Argyll and Bute Council put £196,000 of functional lights on the scrap heap.

Instead, we got £250,000 of conceptual art by Peter McCaughey in the form of Scotland’s first “outdoor museum”.

The concept does not work and the 100 granite bollards are a hazard to drivers. The plinths are below the eye line of a vehicle driver. They interfere with other uses of the space, such as the Summer or Winter Festival.

My view is simple: scrap the plinths!

Elsewhere, there are serious drainage problems on West Clyde Street, evident when there is high rainfall or a winter storm. This work should be tackled as a matter of urgency to prevent West Clyde Street businesses being flooded.

No such worries in the new council offices on East Clyde Street since this building has the only adequate sea defences on the waterfront.

This was the ideal site for a hotel and convention centre. Instead we got the £8.3m Helensburgh Office Rationalsiation Project (HORP) complete with a mock gargoyle on the front.

According to John McKenna, the sculptor of the face, this is either Helen Sutherland or Clota, the river goddess of the Clyde.

The £15,000 cost of this sculpture did not come from private donations but from the sale of the old Templeton Library site after the council neglected the maintenance of a building which had been donated to the town.

The council also neglected the B-listed East Clyde Street School, and part of the £8.3m ‘HORP’ money was spent restoring that neglected building.

However, the amalgam of old and new in the new mongrel council office is an architectural disaster – and, in my view, beyond any snagging relief.

Removing the gargoyle would be a small step in the right direction.

John Black, Woodhollow House, Helensburgh