AN ACCORD.

By far the best press article, read this week by the author, came from a long serving councillor in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Charles Swift has been on the council for 57 years; in those days he worked on the railway. He was voted onto the council as a Labour representative, presumably with a view to protecting the rights of the working class. Mr. Swift, during that time, has been Mayor of Peterborough but has become disenchanted over the years, due to the introduction of expenses for councillors introduced in the seventies. When he started, there was no financial support, and this is how Mr. Swift thinks it should have remained. In the early nineties he became an Independent, as he observed the main parties were milking the system, which will always happen once the door is open. Posts are created, jobs for the boys and girls, this being the trigger for increased local taxes. Not unlike the Unions, posts are occupied by folk who, in general, could not hold down a proper job. In the case of local government, retiring at sixty on a gold plated pension; cruising into the sunset at the workers expense. Strange how socialism has reversed it's principles.

Thank you Mr. Swift, although the writer's politics are different from yours, even so, as one can see from these columns, we both recognize where the problem lies.



ALTHOUGH I'LL NOT VOTE FOR 'AV'.