YOUR article about the newly appointed cabinet and Labour's refusal to accept its posts does not do justice to what I consider to be extremely childish behaviour by the Labour group.

To say "I'm not going on the cabinet if they're (the Independents) are on it" sounds to me like something out of the infants school playground.

We are in a unique situation in Lancaster where we have five parties who represent a diverse range of views across our district. Furthermore, many of the parties represent distinct geographical areas - Independents in Morecambe, Tories the rural areas, Greens West Lancaster, Labour East Lancaster etc. Every party except Labour accepted the Green Party proposal that in order to represent all views and areas the sensible thing to do was to form an all-party cabinet.

Labour claim to dislike the Independents so much that they won't sit on a cabinet with them. But by Labour taking its bat and ball home and refusing to play, they have given the Independents much more power than before. Surely, the adult thing for Labour to do would be to sit on the cabinet, argue its case and to use its votes to try to turn decisions to their way of thinking.

But sadly, Labour councillors have chosen simply to oppose and to create trouble. Of course it is important that cabinet decisions are scrutinised and as a non-cabinet member I will be doing this on any subject where I think the cabinet has made the wrong decision. However, if I was a Labour voter, I would expect my representatives to behave maturely and to represent me in a positive way rather than simply as opposition.

Cllr Jon Barry

Willow Lane

Lancaster