SIR — So McDonalds may come to Minehead - what a dismal prospect!

Cowboys, country and western music, rock and roll, blues, the cinema, the musical, jeans, Disney animation, the skyscraper and the pick-up truck are all American specialities which they do better than we Europeans.

Indeed, our American cousins do many things well, but the bringing up of children, education, culture, cuisine and style do not number among them.

The Americanisation of our television and language are bad enough, but the spectre of their fast food and the context in which it is usually consumed should fill us with dread and repulsion.

The USA is the land of massively overweight, child-fearing people stuffing themselves with hands full of puppy food and sweet drinks by the gallon. This pap is handed out by spotty, gormless, slack-jawed, no-hope clones in cheerleader costumes specialising in throwaway lines and throwaway containers.

And it is the presumption of global acceptance and standardisation which is so awful. From Paris to Peking and from Kalamazoo to Kuala Lumpur, the same food, the same surroundings, the same sameness.

No need to struggle with the local delicacy or language, no need to try a knife and fork, no need to chew, no need to wait, no need to think, no trick, no treat. Just hats round one way serving hats round the other way in a line dance of the brain dead.

A French farmer destroyed a McDonalds the other day because of the affront it caused him and his fellows. Protesters at the world economic conference targeted McDonalds - I cannot justify their actions on economic grounds, but food and culture-wise they had a point.

Minehead should do better and think locally.

Carl Saunders-Singer,

Ballfield Road,

Minehead.