Why use bridge as a giant advert?

I TAKE great pleasure in photographing the many beautiful sights in the North East, as well as advising and guiding personal friends and contacts from abroad around the region.

It therefore pains me enormously when I see the enormous messages, currently a public health message (pictured), displayed over the face of the Tyne Bridge.

Only a few years ago the view of the various Tyne bridges from the Quayside was listed as one of the top 10 vistas in Britain.

It is the variety of shape and the clean lines and curves of these historic structures that help make this view. Why then do the local authorities think it is acceptable to drape immense messages over the worldrenowned Tyne Bridge? It is an abomination.

It is ironic that planning regimes control shop signs in many streets of central Newcastle – for aesthetic reasons – and then they themselves authorise and profit from making the Tyne Bridge a giant advertising hoarding over the Tyne.

Would promotional messages be draped from the Angel of the North, or on the side of Durham Cathedral? I don’t think so. Then how has it come to this?

Each day I see this desecration I am afraid that it only signifies that we, the people in the North East, have so little regard for our heritage. What must visitors think?

MARK KEVILLE, Gosforth