Madam,

The shortsighted and wrong-headed Gwynedd Council policy of closing public toilets will continue to be opposed only ineffectually whilst the council member opposition to the Plaid Council is largely in the hands of disparate highly independent political ‘personalities’, rather than in the hands of a well-organised large opposition party. Opposition to Plaid Cymru’s programme of cuts in Gwynedd has been dis-organised or non-political. Consequently the council’s ‘Gwynedd Challenge’ survey functioned politically to positively endorse all cuts that a majority did not oppose.

Thus not cutting 50 toilets in Gwynedd was opposed by only 23.4 per cent of respondents. Making cuts was built into the survey, and the council used, and is using, good-hearted compliance with the survey as justification for the cuts.

The need for cuts was hugely overstated by the council’s accountancy. Indeed in the name of unnecessary reserve increases, the Plaid council under-estimated the money they had available to spend on services by exactly the value of cuts they insisted upon. Like all the cuts proposed in the Gwynedd Challenge, any cut to the toilet provision is, and was, wholly unnecessary.

We need party opposition on the council, opposition by a party that is anti-austerity, that unites the various anti- Plaid wards in Gwynedd. We need an opposition that is not trying, by its policy choices, merely to diss the Welsh Labour government in Cardiff, an opposition that is not in the hands of disparate local individualists and that is why Labour is on track to stand in force in the council elections next year.

Yours etc

Ian MacIntyre

Arthog Terrace

Arthog.