Brighton can never truly become a city until it can support and sustain its population. Sure, it has a vibrant university culture, club scene, great shopping and many large companies have chosen to relocate in the area.

The sad fact is these companies - including Lloyds TSB, Legal and General, American Express and others - have only taken this step in order to take advantage of our cheap labour pool.

Each year, our universities disgorge fresh batches of several thousand graduates willing to work for peanuts until they get on to a career path. Awaiting these grads, like crocodiles in a waterhole, are the agencies. With a friendly smile these people can fill all the area's call centres for minimal wages. Most agency rates of pay haven't increased for more than four years and currently hover just above the minimum wage level.

So where does this leave people born and bred in Brighton? You have to take a job which pays peanuts, or you know someone else will.

With almost half of all Brighton property purchased by Londoners, you have to get an evening job as well, so you can afford to pay the inflated prices. Like it or not, the economy of this baby by the sea is kept alive by an umbilical cord attached to a mother 50 miles north.

Perhaps a better idea than applying for city status would be to apply to become the London Borough of Brighton and extend the Underground further south. It takes more than a vibrant nightlife, the words of Simon Fanshawe and a few dozen relocated media companies to justify city status.

-Lod Formani, Furze Hill