I CONGRATULATE you on your recent front page headline it is both poetic and prophetic - mockery and democracy, it continues with words like farcical, shambolic and embarrassing.

The history of PCC’s policy and debates on salaries and pensions for senior civil servants since 1996 has been covered by your newspaper and the Western Mail in detail without malice or sensationalism.

The above words are an apt description of what has occurred during the past 18 years and I have contributed to your newspaper a few times, albeit in a small way.

The mistakes of past central and local governments have created the ‘law of unintended consequences’. These failures have made the electors sceptical and suspicious of politicians and bureaucrats.

I have, in the past 50 years, written to many MPs, AMs and MEPs as they change, but civil servants carry on to advise the new ones.

The people who scrutinise them, with checks and balances, are the elected councillors and MPs. When they fail malpractice and maladministration can occur.

I hope that many more electors will vote in future and that taxpayers write to their representatives constantly as democracy is not perfect in Europe, but it is the best we can get and a free press is essential.

JOHN DAVIS

Bulford Road

Johnston