Madam,

I would like to commend Cllr Alun Williams for his principled objections to many of the proposals for ‘savings’ put forward by Pricewaterhouse-Cooper in their report to Ceredigion Council (‘I hate some of these plans, says councillor’, Cambrian News, 12 May).

I am sure very many of those who voted Plaid Cymru in the recent Assembly elections didn’t think they were voting ‘Tory lite’. This party, which seems to say different things to different people, nevertheless is willing to make us pay large sums for a consultant’s report about how to privatise, slash jobs, and cut services, and was willing to consider a coalition in the Senedd with ‘Welsh’ UKIP.

I’m sure many of us, alongside Cllr Williams, have no illusions about the disastrous folly of selling off council assets, for faceless unaccountable companies to make a quick buck. The record of Tory privatisations over the years speaks for itself. We will shortly experience another example of this general approach when our Post Office becomes a back room of WH Smith in Terrace Road.

In order to maximise profits, companies all too often sack experienced staff, cut corners in services, erode employees’ rights, adopt short-term strategies, and plan quick exits when things get tough.

Fortunately, we may just be seeing the first signs of a new way to do things, with Labour rejecting the ‘same old... same old’ at long last, and coming out fighting. Some Labour politicians, at least, are beginning to explain that ‘austerity’ is just another name for the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, from public services to private yachts.

Is it correct that the UK is the sixth richest country in the world, and yet we are closing libraries?

Maybe at next year’s county elections, it would be a good idea to think hard before voting in councillors unwilling to be transparent, and yet apparently comfortable to go the Tory way...

Yours etc

Maurice Kyle

Comins Coch

Aberystwyth.