WE have just received a letter from the Revenues and Benefits office in Whittaker Street, Radcliffe, informing us that council tax instalments should in future be paid on the fifth day of the month.

Then comes the crunch. As we turn over the page there is an instruction to a bank or building society to pay by direct debit.

We are being asked to sign a document to enable Bury MBC to gain access to our funds. We don't know how much, or how many instalments or anything else, except that they want payment on the fifth day of the month (which, incidentally, occurs on a Saturday in May and a Sunday in August).

We have paid our council tax by standing order through the bank since the days of the poll tax and now I am told that standing orders are being phased out.

Well, I am afraid I want no part of direct debits. So we will take our tax to the town hall when it is convenient to us. I am sure a lot more people will do the same, and probably a lot of money will consequently be lost by way of late payments.

I don't know whether it is the banks who have decided to scrap standing orders, or Bury MBC. But I am afraid it is a step backwards, which is par for the course.

Bury is no longer the town that I grew up in. And this is progress?

GEOFF BARON