OUR local politicians are a credit to themselves.

The Stourbridge News (August 28) carried not one but two picture stories of Councillor Karen Shakespeare, Dudley Council's cabinet member for the environment and culture.

In each case, she was beating the drum to encourage more domestic recycling. I'm not quite sure why she needed two bites at the cherry but nevertheless her crusade is highly commendable.

However, Councillor Shakespeare should spend less time on posing for cheesy photographs for the press and more time on dragging the council's recycling programme out of the Dark Ages.

The list of items which will be taken in kerbside collections (printed in one of the two Stourbridge News articles) is only slighter shorter than the ones which will be left behind.

Unlike Dudley Council, most progressive local authorities include cardboard, cereal boxes and greetings cards, and plastic bottles in their kerbside collections. Indeed, the council itself provides separate collection points for cardboard - but only at its civic amenity sites.

So, the thousands of tons of residents' discarded cardboard and plastic bottles across Dudley Council's area goes to landfill which, as we all know, is rapidly dwindling.

Further - and this little-known fact may shock other readers - the massive amount of litter placed in litter bins across the borough is not sorted (either manually or mechanically) and so hundreds of tons of drinks cans and bottles also go to landfill not to recycling.

Crazy or what?

The self-congratulatory articles in the Stourbridge News highlight the council's past acheievements in recycling and its future targets. But such figures are meaningless unless compared with other local authorities' performances.

I suspect the reason this benchmark is omitted is because the comparisons would be very embarrassing indeed for Councillor Shakespeare and Dudley Council.

R Haywood, Oldswinford