The reported market rent arrears backlog is an absolute disgrace and is yet another prime example of the gross inefficiency and incompetence of the Labour group's administration of Lancaster Council. It can't blame any government for this - it governs locally and it alone must accept responsibility.

Clearly both Labour councillors and senior officers, including the city treasurer, must share responsibility in this matter. The market saga has been a disaster since day 1 - both physically and financially. And the way Councillor Henig and Charles Wilson have pushed the scheme through, riding roughshod over opposition, has been nothing short of a scandal. It would not surprise me if the final scenario will be the closure of the market and its transfer to a shopping mall or perhaps supermarket triggering the total demise of the market.

Over the past few years we have experienced disaster after disaster under Labour control - the closure of Bubbles and Marineland - all with huge losses, payouts to AMEC, the ongoing Mr Blobby fiasco - huge losses on WOMAD and associated events as well as an estimated £1million overspend on the Salt Ayre complex. We have also seen two city secretaries and two town clerks come and go we are on our third city treasurer and second head of commercial services and we now have two senior officers suspended. All this from a council which wanted unitary status and all this in the political lifetime of Councillor Stan Henig - no wonder there's been no strong action against any senior officers for the latest crisis - there'd be no blessed staff left!

The problem is that while the Labour leader, like some latter-day Nero fiddles academically in his ivory tower, his less academic colleagues are wreaking havoc with their administrative shortcomings. It is just a pity that the electors of this district chose to express their dissatisfaction with central government by discarding the parties now in opposition... for there now appears to be no opposition!

Remember the words of William Pitt: "...unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it."

David Wood.

County Councillor,

Lancaster rural north

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.