TERANCE HATCH, of Forster Road, Salcombe, writes: I was intrigued to read Garry Edgecombe's letter in last week's Gazette about his proposal to drive away the second-home plague that inflicts Salcombe. His idea about using the noisy and industrial pastime of waterskiing on the estuary to facilitate the uglification of the harbour is a stroke of genius. First, though, I must take issue with his ribbing of the ex-mayor Peter Howard, who, through endless self-sacrifice, has done nothing but good for the ungrateful people of Salcombe. Returning to the subject of using scare tactics to drive away the invidious presence of the people who use Salcombe purely for investment and pension management, I would like to add a few ideas of my own on how to make Salcombe less desirable to the banker and his ilk. First we might consider an offshore fracking platform off Sunny Cove: this would surely add greatly to the detriment of the Salcombe allure. Perhaps even a static travellers' camp at Courtenay Park: this they could use as a base from which to peddle tarmac and clothes pegs all over the South Hams. But my personal favourite is to remove all those nasty trees along Cliff Road and build an incinerator, where the westerly breezes would convey a chemical cocktail of fumes along the waterfront, resulting in a disastrous plunge in property prices. But I must say, we shouldn't consider driving the Salcombe plague towards a similarly threatened Dartmouth, as I predict that in 10 years' time Dartmouth's council will be frantically considering a project to allow the building of a steel-rolling plant or a nuclear reactor on Jawbone Hill. Mark my words, all this will come to pass – and remember, you heard it here first.