IF Gilbert & Sullivan were still alive, they would create a wonderful satirical opera about local government and particularly BCP.

I admit my only involvement is paying my Council Tax, but that gives good reason to expect the Council to be run with common sense and by people capable of making sensible decisions without it involving loads of tax payers money that is wasted on ridiculous schemes.

A while ago I wrote a letter to say I was incensed that a Poole Councillor should speak out strongly in a Planning Committee meeting about a car park in Boscombe which I doubt she knew anything about - perhaps visited once on a Sunday. I suggested that each town should still retain planning responsibility for their own area.

I didn't know then there were already plans to split the Planning Committee at tremendous expense into East and West. So once again I am prompted to put forward a simple suggestion, which unless there is some sort of skulduggery going on, shouldn't cost any money at all - or arguments. And what is more I won't charge them or the community anything!

Why cannot it simply be that the Planning Committee should be split into three parts - Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch as it always was before the complicated BCP amalgamation. So that Councillors for each town vote for the planning of their own town that they represent and know as opposed to making big decisions about an area they neither know nor have any interest in. In fact I would even go so far as to say it would be fairer all round, and take out any 'passing the buck' between the towns.

If they want any help, then I will come along and line all the councillors up in the 'playground' and say 'Right you're from Poole - you go to that corner, you're from Christchurch you go to that corner, you're from Bournemouth you go to that corner - and hey presto - you have three planning committees - one for each town.

Surely they can make that work - or are we on some far away planet?

Mary Hurst

Uplands Road,

Bournemouth