AS A local businessman I travel many miles each year up and down the length and breadth of the UK. Much of my business is secured when I have opportunity to bring foreign visitors to Scotland. Please be assured – I used to be very proud of our historic town and district.

Many years on, I must conclude that those responsible for investment and planning within Fife Council are completely devoid of AMBITION! It’s one word which adequately sums up what is completely lacking in those in charge at Fife Council.

I recently took two visitors from Holland and Slovakia on a weekend drive from Fife to Perthshire and proudly pointed out the many glorious views, our surrounding countryside, our industrial areas and our old and modern housing.

Sadly, I have to say that frequently on my journey I found myself apologising for the poor, untidy and dilapidated state of much of our beautiful township and environs: The town centre, with its pot-holed and sunken roads.

A High Street which is neither pedestrian nor open road, with mums pushing prams and the elderly, having to dodge a steady flow of cars and delivery lorries.

The once beautiful but now appalling empty buildings near the centre of town.

The multiple and completely unnecessary and exceedingly frustrating sets of traffic lights, all within a small radius.

The burnt-out factories on the Hillend Industrial Estate, left to rot.

Boarded-up shops.

Leftover road works signs and traffic cones littering pavements and gutters.

Collapsed drains and vast sunken and pot-holed sections of roads where road surfaces have disappeared altogether.

In the countryside exiting our town, a factory unit with burst walls and an ageing and now ancient ‘mountain’ of old carpets left to decay, fester and pollute.

All of the above visited and discussed, shown in glorious colour on the front pages of the Dunfermline Press. Promises made by the good and the attention-seeking, the important and the ordinary. Those with titles in the world of officaldom whose salaries are paid by us and yet over many years (and in some cases decades) these eyesores and areas of disrepair remain, undeveloped, decaying and making money for those who are clever enough to bend the law, hanging on until prices rise and they can sell at profit.

Clearly, those we pay and trust to have ability and good judgment display absolutely no ambition, either for themselves, their reputations or those they represent. They are happy to take a wage from us, the taxpayer, and are content to continually fail us. Devoid of the ambition to act or react, think ‘outside-the-box’ to develop areas, improve our world and create jobs and training for the next and forgotten generation.

It’s those who are now growing up in Fife that they completely fail. Please be very ashamed Fife councillors and all of those who work at Fife House for us and paid for by us. You are the cause of this decay.

Fife is bursting with talent and proud people. It’s an area filled with those willing to work and keen to make a difference. In Scotland there is a new generation of voters who, hopefully in numbers, will demand change at the next UK elections in May 2015.

Watch out all political parties. Those of you with no ambition and no ability. Hopefully you will all be replaced by those who care and will work harder to make a difference.

I have lived in Dunfermline for more than 35 years and, frankly, I am ashamed of how it looks and what it has become. We can spend more money and pay lip-service to weekly and ill-thought-out ‘initiatives’ and ‘fluffy-bunny’ coffee mornings providing photo opportunities at primary schools and superstore openings but until we sort our town’s rusting, decomposing and withered image, there will be little by way of jobs created by inward investment (who in their right mind would want to set-up a business here?).

Before writing to the Press I contacted every single Fife councillor, left messages on desk and mobile phones and, out of six contacted, one replied two weeks later. They visited me, took away notes and agreed that something had to be done and that was the end of their actions.

They vanished, never to comment or return with an action plan. How sad! Hang your inept heads in shame. You might be happy with mediocrity but we’re not!

Name and address have been supplied.