SO, the Festival Clock, once sited and much appreciated in John Frost Square, is finally to be taken out of mothballs and resited in, of all places, on a roundabout outside Llanwern. Not only this indignity, but the ingenious and costly mechanisms which gave it its name In the Nick of Time are to be left to erode in obscurity.

This is a unique structure which cost us (yes, all of us) £100,000 to represent Newport at the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival.

It is now proposed to be sold off to a developer for one tenth of that amount. Why? Isn’t there a patch of earth available in the huge redevelopment of Newport town centre worthy of what was once ours?

If not, then why not just shove a stick in the ground and call it a sundial?

Julian R Powell, Larch Grove, Newport