Brighton and Hove's parks and pavements are paved with poo and it's not a pretty sight.

New heaps of mess appear every morning, forcing pedestrians to keep their eyes peeled so they don't put a foot wrong and endure a brown and stinky slide.

There are an estimated 20 million pet dogs and cats in this country, each of which has to go at least once a day, and let's be honest about this: the plague of poo is not all down to dogs.

A proportion of it is fox poo and another proportion is cat poo.

Who are the party poopers who leave their pets' ponging piles?

I'll deal with dogs first. As a responsible dog owner who collects, I can understand an owner who occasionally fails to notice their dog crouching, but not those who deliberately do so and give the rest of us a bad name: those who pull up next to a park, let their dog out and then drive off without even leaving their car, the collectors who leave the bag hanging on a tree branch, and the late-night walkers who can't see when their dog is doing it. Take a torch with you.

And then there are the cat owners who enjoy the fact that cats do their business discreetly. While there are many responsible cat owners who train their cats to use a litter tray, for many others 'discreetly' means out of sight, out of mind. 'Discreetly' means someone else's garden, or the park, or the pavement.

Dog owners have a legal duty to clean up but cat owners face no legal responsibility. Councils have the power to tackle public dog mess under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, and rightly so as it is a health hazard.

But as cat mess can carry E coli and the toxoplasmosis virus, which causes serious defects in unborn babies, this Act should now be extended to cat owners. It should be as socially unacceptable for a cat owner to fail to take responsibility for their pet's mess as it is for dog owners, and irresponsible cat owners should face the same penalties.

I suggest a solution. Everyone should take collective responsibility for public poo by carrying doggy bags with them and cleaning it up. Repellent though it might be to scoop it up, it's far more revolting to put your foot in it.

Katy Rice, Argus reporter from Brighton.

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Big Brother has struck again and there is a silent menace in our midst.

A comforting sound that helps to save the lives of young and old is disappearing.

An education tool used by parents to teach their children road crossing safety is doing a vanishing trick that fails to aid our diverse community.

I have a three year old daughter I am teaching her to cross the road. As a parent I use the “stop, look and listen” technique at pedestrian crossings.

I am further helped by a touch button with a green, amber, red men traffic light system that used to be complemented by a bleeping noise to tell children when it was safe to cross as well as being an aid for the disabled and elderly.

It has been some surprise that when standing at the traffic lights waiting to cross the busy and dangerous cross roads in Woodingdean to walk to nursery, I failed to hear the bleep that I use myself to cross the road.

Brighton city centre has also lost its comforting bleep, although the visual aids are still available. The roads near Woodingdean are horrendous, especially with the number of schools in the vicinity.

All those children run a gauntlet with their parents in the morning and afternoon at times when the roads are at their busiest.

The centre of town is no different with busy roads with lots of confused people not sure when to cross.

Our city supports a large blind community with St Dunstans at Ovingdean as well as other blind, young and elderly people who would otherwise benefit from the noise at pedestrian crossings.

There are six types of pedestrian crossings - school, zebra, pelican, puffin, toucan and pegasus.

The noisy pelican has been replaced with the silent Big Brother style puffin.

A child will remember to stop to cross the road aided by a bleeping noise as a reminder, but I do feel silent Big Brother is robbing us both of the ability to think and make decisions for ourselves.

This is an important life skill for when there is no pedestrian crossing and an aid for parents to teach their children road safety.

Please give us back our bleep!

A mother from Brighton, who asked not to be named. ....................................................

My first son is now a happy 12-year-old who loves football.

But when he first emerged into the world at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, he was a struggling little baby, a stranger to me and to the medical staff who secured his post-natal survival in a mobile resuscitation unit.

As I watched the paediatrician and nurses at work, I could see that this little boy mattered to them. These were moments of intense human solidarity.

The care my son received was not an accident.

It happened because we, as a society, willed it to happen and had arranged things accordingly.

The well-being of mothers and their children was the concern of all of us.

My son was not a customer or service user, but a human being who was valued.

Any child in the country would have received the same attention.

This fact encapsulates the preciousness of the National Health Service.

It is an institution we have devised to care for each other when we are ill and at our most vulnerable. It is a great achievement of human solidarity.

I spent most of last year campaigning against the Health and Social Care Bill because I believe that it undermines the very foundations of the NHS, by making it easier for private profit-driven companies to displace public NHS providers of care.

When (as the Bill makes possible) 49% of the beds at the Royal Sussex are filled with private patients, will it still be an NHS hospital?

Why are Virgin Care (from the same “family” of companies as Virgin Money) getting involved in health care?

The bill will create a national health market - and in markets money talks.

Start saving for your private health insurance.

My grandchildren won't get the welcome into the world that my son did.

Sean de Podesta, Brighton.

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