Madam,

Once again Patrick O’Brien writes it as it is in his column in last week’s Cambrian News, when he writes that the county council leader ‘is trying to defend the indefensible’ by saying that the £2m payment of tax payers’ money to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has achieved £12m to £14m savings.

Mr O’Brien also writes that the council should itself have been entirely capable of coming up with the kind of money-saving proposals suggested by PwC. This is exactly what Ceredigion council taxpayers have been saying/asking for years but they have been ignored. I now ask have we no voice through our elected councillors or is the abhorrence of this unnecessary spending falling on deaf ears? As the old adage says: “there is none so deaf as those that do not want to hear.”

All those councillors who voted for this near £2m contract with PwC should defend this action and not just the leader Ellen ap Gwynne.

No contract should ever be undertaken on taxpayers’ behalf that has ‘confidential clauses of non-disclosure’ - usually to the advantage of the provider - which keep details from us the taxpayers (unless of a private, individual nature). This is against democracy and, incidentally, what brought about the leader’s embarrassment on TV, for being unable to break the confidentiality of the contract because of the unnecessary non-disclosure clause.

If all county councils had to survive financially as in private enterprise, without being able to just up our council tax to cover such unnecessary expenditure as this, then they may listen to their taxpayers. Today’s austerity is so different to that of those brought up during and after the second world war. If the council wants free advice on saving taxpayers’ money, why not consult with the more elderly residents who lived through such times and really know what unnecessary expenditure is?

Does this squandering of taxpayers’ money suggest that councillors who agreed to this profligate spending of public money were born with silver spoons in their mouths or is it that they are just easily persuaded by party politics?

Yours etc

Pat Bates

Maes-Maelor

Penparcau

Aberystwyth.