Our councils are irrelevant apart from tax

3:14pm Friday 16th March 2007

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I WAS driving along the potholed ravaged streets of High Wycombe on Tuesday when I suddenly became very angry.

Only one day earlier, I had received my latest council tax bill which informed me my annual charge had risen to £1,593.93.

As my slow-moving car jerked over another yawning abyss in the road, I reflected on the 4.5 per cent increase levied upon me by Bucks County Council.

Of course, the council says it will be repairing these holes and blames them on the prolonged rainfall and frost from the winter.

I'll take councillors' word for this, but to be honest it wasn't really the potholes that were making me so angry.

To pay £1,593.93 council tax, I have to earn more than £2,000 before tax. That's a sizeable amount when you add it to the various mortgage bills and utility fees.

I am in a good job and am lucky by a lot of people's standards, but I'm still left with nothing at the end of each month. So goodness knows how pensioners cope.

But I wouldn't mind so much if I was getting anything for this council tax and the constant above-inflation increases.

All I see, however, is the public of Bucks receiving less and less from the ridiculous three-tier system of local government.

It's well-documented the county council is cutting library and gritting services, and is turning off street lights in some areas to save bills.

But even that doesn't get my goat as much as the pettiness shown by our lords and masters.

I held a birthday party at a local hall for my young son two weeks ago. At the end, we collected all of the rubbish and carried it away in the boot of my car in black bin liners.

Then, I loaded the sacks in to my wheelie bin, filling it to the brim. I managed to stuff everything in, apart from one sack which I left on the grass in front of the bin.

Naturally, this was ignored and left exactly where it lay when the dustmen called.

Now, I don't for a moment blame the rubbish collectors. It's always been Wycombe District Council's declared policy that bin bags on the ground are not picked up.

So I have to wait a further two weeks for them to come again when my bin will be filled to bursting point once again, and it's likely I'll have to dump more unsightly rubbish on the grass. Alternatively, I can pollute the environment by driving the uncollected bag to the dump.

It makes me mad because I was trying to be a good citizen by cleaning up nicely after myself - but councillors repaid me by effectively telling me I had collected too much rubbish.

But then our councils only seem interested in meeting government waste targets. They never appear that bothered about actually helping their public.

I've edited several letters lately from angry householders who have been turned away from rubbish dumps because they were in a van and didn't have the necessary permits. I feel for these people because they genuinely do care about cleaning up the environment.

It's the same story time and again: our councillors talk a good game about saving the world, but they are rarely as diligent as the taxpayers.

This is one of the reasons I resent paying them a penny more in tax.

I also resent the fact they ignored calls to turn the three-tier system in to one streamlined authority earlier this year.

They bleat on and on about central government denying them proper grants. I used to feel sorry for them, but the whines have become tired after so many years. They need to accept things ain't going to change, and they need to move on and adapt.

In the real world, businesses which are losing money look at cutting back and radically changing their structures.

Our councillors trim around the edges and lop away at our services, but wouldn't dream of altering their own overblown outdated system.

I bet most of you out there don't even understand the three-tiers, and you don't understand what the difference is between district, parish and county councils.

That's because our councils have become irrelevant to our lives in all but one respect.

And that respect is the disgraceful tax they relentlessly force upon us year after year after year.