I EXPECTED that there would be a fair amount of disagreement to my letter applauding Bournemouth council for raising council tax but I didn’t expect such a lack of understanding about the current funding situation.

Firstly, I would like to dispel the myth around so called ‘gold plated pensions’. Local government employees (and yes, I was one myself) pay for their pensions. There seems to be some confusion here with Civil Service employees who do receive a non-contributory pension.

The government have severely cut subsidies to local authorities and whether you agree with this or not, it is a fact. This means that local councils have far less to spend on services and have had to make extremely tough decisions on how best to cope with this.

To put it in extremely simple terms, if a household has £100 per week to spend on food and, having put all the essential items in their supermarket trolley and when they get to the checkout the goods come to £120, what do they do?

Do they put £20 worth back and do without (i.e. cut some services completely), cut back on other expenditure on electricity (i.e. restrict services) or go to their employer and ask for a salary increase (i.e. increase council tax)?

To suggest that the council is full of inefficient, lazy and greedy employees that are responsible for the current financial difficulties is pathetic. People need to wake up and start thinking beyond the end of their nose.

It might be useful if the council could provide some ‘facts and figures’ to the Echo for publication so that people can better understand the situation and appreciate the difficulties that are currently being experienced.

NANCY CURTIS

Sea Road, Boscombe

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