READING about the rats plaguing Govan (Evening Times August 18), as someone who lived there for over 10 years, I can say the issues arise from there being too few bin collections, inadequate street cleaning, the failure of all tenants to keep their back courts clean, rogue landlords, plus there is fly-tipping on an industrial scale - vans arriving in the early hours and tipping dozens of sacks of refuse in back alleys and back courts.

I left because of this. I now live in the West End (in a very multicultural area near the university) where street cleaning, while not perfect, is undertaken with much more frequency and care, and bins are regularly collected.

However, I have ‘middle-class’ Glaswegian neighbours who drop their bin bags and cigarette ends out of the windows, leave rubbish and broken Buckfast bottles in the communal garden, while another neighbour recently observed a chap urinating out of the window onto the street.

There needs to be less over-crowding, more oversight into rentals and harsher punishments for rogue landlords.

It needs more bin collections and street and back court cleaning (cleaning back courts should be added to factoring).

This is a real issue that the people of Govanhill deserve to have resolved.

Eleanor Eastlake, posted online

NICOLA Sturgeon should be dealing with what is going on in her own backyard instead of jetting all over the place!

If people could see the state of Govanhill they would not be voting her back in.

D Maloney, posted online

I NOTE Robert Calderwood, chief executive of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, is to retire in the new year after seven years at the helm. (Evening Times August 17).

Like most NHS boards, their record of performance is appalling. But I doubt that this will detract from Mr Calderwood’s “severance” package, which for people in such posts usually consists of a final salary pension contribution and the usual thank you payment, otherwise known as the Golden Handshake”.

Sadly, of course, again at taxpayers expense.

And so the gravy train rolls on, to where next?

Frank McKain, Otago Park, East Kilbride

READING about Nicola Sturgeon considering calling a snap referendum in the wake of Brexit (Evening Times online August 18), how exactly was she going to do that?

She has no power to call a referendum, that is a decision that can only be made by the UK Parliament.

This is just another example of her being too wrapped up in her own self-importance to concern herself with the real issues that affect the people of Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Just how much money has been wasted on her meaningless visits to EU bureaucrats since the leave vote?

Her and her party have duped the Scottish people into thinking they have only their best interests at heart, when quite clearly they have only their own.

Chris Kennedy, posted online