As one of the residents who has had their rubbish piled on the doorstep uncollected for the past week due to the dispute between Brighton and Hove City Council and the refuse collectors, I have to take issue with your report of the dispute (The Argus, August 30).

Do you seriously expect the public to believe that your "revelations" about payment of agreed bonuses for additional work was anything other than a plant by some Alistair Campbell wannabe at the council?

Somebody clearly thought it would be a smart move to circumvent agreed industrial relations procedures by turning public feeling against refuse collectors to get out of the agreed bonus payment and alienate support for the workers to more readily facilitate changes in the refuse collection system in the city.

I expect journalists to provide some balance but, having described the dispute as being the "story of a council being held to ransom by a union apparently pathologically resistant to change", all credibility went out of the window.

The comments by the leader of the council confirm this suspicion.

This view is, of course, completely at odds with a later claim that the union official involved "should have looked closer to home" for the source of the disclosure.

Well, you got what you wanted. The workers were duly abused and vilified going about their work.

The consequence was that hundreds, maybe thousands, of residents did not get the refuse service they have paid for and even more rubbish now litters the city's streets.

-John Knight, Brighton