It takes a shoe these days to get some attention. The one thrown at former US President George W. Bush in Iraq, the other thrown at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at Cambridge University and the shoe that I threw into a large pothole in my street (The Hole Truth About Our Roads, January 14) all got some attention. Maybe it was Minister Austin Gatt's declaration of war on the potholed streets and roads of this fair land or the initiative of the local council of Mosta, or maybe it was my shoe in The Times, but last week the numerous potholes at Tal-Blata l-Għolja in Mosta were at time of writing being patched up or filled up - with cold asphalt, of course. Still three streets to go but some gratitude from me and my neighbours is surely in order. Better late than never.

I said the potholes were being patched up or filled up. Now we have repeatedly been told that cold asphalt does not last long when compared with hot asphalt. I would like to invite a learned technical person who is an expert, in road patching at least, to confirm or deny whether it is standard practice to place a bed of pulverised, recycled street surface at the bottom of the deeper potholes before overlaying with a crust of cold asphalt. My inexpert intuition tells me that this method will make patching last only until the next prolonged rainfall, but it sure makes it cheaper than filling the pothole completely with asphalt. An ADT comment is solicited. I have collected a sample of the stuff placed underneath the top layer of pothole patching.

If nobody who should will bother to answer the query, it should be up to the Mosta local council (and all other councils) to find out if this is "state-of-the-art" practice in road patching or not. If local councils do not follow up on this they are being irresponsible with public funds. If the contractors are doing this as an innocent exercise in cost cutting, they should be admonished to change the method of repair. If the contractors are doing this in full knowledge that the repair will fail with the next rains, so guaranteeing repeat business, it is blatant fraud.

A significant number of potholes repaired a month ago in the access streets in my area (100 metres in all) have already opened up again! "The shoe and the pothole" sounds like a nice name for a fairytale.