THE recent letter from the Labour county councillor for Cinderford tried to turn the world on its head with his attempt to excuse Labour's record of poor financial management.
Despite what Cllr Morgan claims, the council's budget was set by the former Labour administration and was not supported by the Conservatives. Indeed the Labour Party avoided tough choices ahead of the election – that is why the new council is swimming in red ink and council tax payers are worried about the future. Incidentally, Cllr Morgan was happy to vote for a 13 per cent council tax rise by the County Council – no tough choices there either. Moreover, it is once again Labour councillors who have started to try and resurrect their unpopular plan to impose car parking charges.
In the recent local election campaign the Conservatives were the only party that consistently explained to the electors the truth about the council's poor financial state including the forecast deficits of £2 million over the next two years and the pension fund gap. Some electors may have been sceptical about these claims at the time but they are now widely recognised to have been spot on. In contrast, not a word about these problems appeared in the Labour leaflets.
I'll leave it to your readers to judge just who was telling the truth and who was hiding it. Perhaps the fact that the Conservatives gained 14 seats at the elections and Labour lost 12, including their leader, means that your readers have already made that judgement. – Mark Harper, Newham Bottom, Ruardean.