THERE will be a flood of cynical letters coming from the electors/taxpayers post Christmas and into the new year about excesses with taxpayer revenue, especially as the very word transformation has hidden agendas of which the councillors will not be aware.

There is still the ghost of Bryn Parry-Jones lurking in the council committee rooms and the scrutiny officers with their legal advisers are still recovering from the embarrassment of the Welsh Assembly legal experts contradicting their decisions.

The elected councillors have no reason to complain if they have to work harder and longer in their decisionmaking process as their salaries and expenses have always risen pro-rata in line with their civil servants.

This type of team of advisers have been working together closely with their councillors throughout all regional assemblies since 1996 – that has given all of them 20 years of admin and finance experience.

They should now be looking for and demanding more revenue from central government. However, they may not have the courage and the political will to do it.

The cabinet system operating at the moment has had several flaws in 20 years and it may be time to modify it, because only a dozen out of 60 elected councillors take part in it. This begs the question: Why did we elect the others and what could be done with their salaries and expenses? The central government in Westminster and their advisers in Whitehall do not come out of this financial soup with clean hands – for example their persistent gifts to foreign governments and dictators in past colonies and Eastern Europe.

This taxpayer revenue is sorely needed in the UK in all regions for social, educational and medical purposes as we now have a form of civil poverty with the elderly, the very poor, the mentally ill, the disabled and blind.

We have witnessed the betrayal of electors/taxpayers twice in the past hundred years after two world wars, not only by politicians and bureaucrats but also commerce and industry, with aristocratic landowners following in their footsteps.

The bankers seem to have lost the plot by gambling with their clients’ money in the casinos of the currency speculators and pension funds have become a corrupt form of insurance. The taxpayers’ charity should stay in the UK.

Thank God that the modern elector is better informed by a free press and better educated by their own efforts.

JOHN DAVIS

Johnston