I AM disgusted by a council which, despite being about £4 million in debt, is spending almost £1 million on town centre artwork, £760,000 of which has already gone to America.

As a founder member of Warrington Visual Arts Forum and long-standing member of Warrington Art Group, I am very well aware that many talented young artists in the town would have loved to have been responsible for this work.

Why, like the River of Life memorial, could this work not have been commissioned reasonably locally?

Loyalty, ladies and gentlemen of the council, surely begins at home and we certainly do not need the environmentally arrogant American vultures to feed on the scraps in the Warrington cultural desert.

DR MICHAEL MADDEN

Barleycastle Lane,

Appleton