Sir, This weekend, along with my wife, I am attending a friend's home in Tenby to celebrate the 40th anniversary of my wife and four friends starting their degree courses in Aberystwyth. It has been a very enjoyable reunion, old happy memories being exchanged and the base is a magnificent old Georgian house overlooking the South Beach. However, about half-way through the weekend we have become acutely aware that we are in fact staying in a state resembling the worst of post war Iron Curtain countries where the rights of the individual citizen are ignored to the point of being incarcerated in one's own home for periods of six hours every day during the months of July and August. The catalyst for this revelation was the premature departure of one of the guests owing to the serious medical condition of her husband which had precluded him from attending the reunion. When our hostess reported to the Stasi headquarters, otherwise masquerading as the Pembrokeshire County Council headquarters, that one of the guests was being obliged to leave early, she was informed by the Rosa Kleb character on the telephone that such a movement was forbidden by the state - notwithstanding that she was possessed of a walled residents‚ permit - as insufficient notice of the vehicle registration number had been received and it did not comply with the regulations concerning the movement of transport within the town walls. Common sense and simple human understanding and compassion not being within the characteristics of this particular apparatchik, our friend decided to break cover and make good her escape. To date we have not heard whether she has reached the other side, but even if she does, I understand she faces punishment for her heinous crime in the form of a possible conviction for a moving traffic offence, her vehicle having been caught by the state-operated cameras. Enquiries of our hostess revealed further information as to the characteristics of the police state to which residents of the walled part of the town are subjected. To a resident from other parts of the UK they are unbelievable and, were they not a simple breach of human rights under the European Human Rights Convention, they would be laughable and be dismissed as ideas fresh from Lilliput. Seriously, the effects of the regulations are to interfere substantially with basic family life to the extent that residents with families are considering whether to move from the area. I gather that the idea is to encourage visitors to come to a traffic free area. Wake up, Tenby, otherwise you will find that the visitors are coming to a ghost town with the residents having fled the ghetto for a place where basic human rights are recognised.

David Hopkins, Chester.