Brian Wedgwood, of Teignmouth, writes:
How fascinating to read the contents of the letters page in your issue last week.
You can tell straight away there is an election pending with each party saying they are the best at managing both the county and district finances.
Quite frankly they are as bad as each other.
To increase council tax by 2.89 per cent does not sound very much but compared to the Inflation Index it is the highest percentage increase above inflation ever recorded.
These people need to be in industry to know what Budgets mean. To reduce costs within both the county and district authorities is simple:
l Do away with all the non-jobs created over the last three years.
2 Learn from the private sector and cut one's cloth to suit the present economic climate and reduce staff numbers substantially.
3 Stop recruitment.
4 Find ways of increasing revenue and start by charging all local authority employees car parking fees at both council and district offices – after all, 70 per cent of office and shopworkers have to pay parking charges to be able to turn up for work.
Unfortunately the people we pay to oversee the running of our county and district councils and the councillors we elect to manage these executives seem to live in a different world to the one that many of us experience.
The police are just the same – every year just before the increase in council tax is announced we are told by our Police Authority chairman Cllr John Smith that there will be a huge increase in bobbies on the beat. Where are they?
These are tarnished with the same brush as the majority of those who represent us at Westminster.