Madam,

I totally agree with the sentiments expressed by several of your correspondents lately concerning the wholly unnecessary and unwise cutbacks presently proposed by Gwynedd Council’s Plaid Cymru-run Cabinet.

With public toilets, salt bins, tourist information centres, let alone schools, refuse collections, libraries and road maintenance, being axed left, right and centre, does council leader, Cllr Dyfed Edwards, really expect us, who live outside the “cabinet bubble”, to believe his rhetoric that Gwynedd Council is performing well? Perhaps he does!

But somehow his pronouncements come as no surprise to those of us who have seen Plaid in Gwynedd disintegrate from a radical, democratic and partisan political movement of the 1970s and 1980s to a damning reflection of its former self that offers no real vision of the future and which carry out the wishes of Cardiff Labour and London Conservative governments without question.

Under Plaid rule, Gwynedd Council could have implemented social, economic and cultural policies, the envy of regions and peoples throughout Europe. But sadly that was not to be.

Next May’s local government elections will hopefully provide the good people of Gwynedd the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and to return members with a mandate to govern or to provide a coherent opposition to Plaid’s crippling austerity programme whose dogma is to unload essential services on community councils who don’t have the capacity or the finances of Gwynedd Council’s 6,000 staff with an annual budget of £400m. How nonsensical is that?

Yours etc,

Cllr Alwyn Gruffydd, Llais Gwynedd, Tremadog.

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