Madam,

Plaid Cymru’s ‘public declaration’, that the cuts in Gwynedd are ‘not their fault’ is out of date and, crucially, wrong factually (Cambrian News, 10 December, ‘Public declaration will oppose further £7m cuts’).For instead of the four per cent cut in the council grant (of £267 million in 2015-16) which Plaid has been busy implementing, the people of Gwynedd have been given relief by the Labour Government in Cardiff to the tune of 2.4 per cent - ie services to the value of £4.03m. The Labour Party has thus defeated the Conservative plans for severe austerity everywhere, this time in public services, as it did recently over Tax Credits.Nonetheless, Plaid Cymru will still try to make cuts. For the relief of £4.03m does not cover fully the £7 bil-lion in cuts that Plaid was planning to make.

Yet were Plaid Cymru to implement up to the allowable five per cent increase in Council Tax, instead of the 3.5 per cent it proposes, there would be up to a further £1.737m in the kitty.That, together with the much-vaunted increases in efficiency in back-office services saving £2m, would mean there would be no need to make any cuts at all. Indeed there would be scope to improve the quality of services and start increasing the desultory wages the Plaid council pays to its poorest workers.

But these happier circumstances only come about with a 5 per cent rise. Instead of making the rich pay, Plaid wants to cut the services of the poorest off among us so that the streets are all the young have, a walk to the bus shelter in the rain with the pram is all the single parents have and a windy seat on the front is all the old have.

They play with radical politics but Plaid Cymru, in action, where it has power, is the party of the privileged rich Welsh. It is to Wales what the Tories are to England, the party of the traditonalist rich. Labour fights both sources of unfairness, in both countries.

Yours etc

Ian MacIntyre

Arthog Terrace, Arthog.