FOLLOWING the report by David Bartlett (LT, Feb 3) regarding the council cuts in help and social care currently given over to our disabled and elderly community, the newspaper invites suggestions from readers on "where the council should make cuts?"

Firstly, despite the "£53m" annual budget of the adult social services department, they have managed to miscalculate their arithmetic and overspend £1.6m this year alone.

Perhaps the £400,000 spent on "setting up" the Care Network - an information and advice service - may explain a small but significant percentage of the deficit?

Or perhaps the £24,000 per head that it apparently costs the council annually to transport 250 severely disabled' people to and from day centres may explain yet another proportion of the overspend?

The council's adult social services department is currently spending in excess of £18,000 per person every year on providing just some of their care requirement. A weekly amount of around £350/person.

A sure way to prevent the impending cuts would be to give these people £350 per week each and ask them to use the money for the provision fo their own care needs.

I'll bet they'll take up the offer and provide a better service for themselves individually than the social service department have managed to provide in bulk.

The reasons being that the vast majority of governmental and council services provided are done so with an enormous and increasing number of digit tapping, pen-pushing bureaucrats.

The army of civil servants supposedly providing, monitoring, surveying and ultimately dictating and analysing our services will outnumber and cost more than the service itself.

It is not just the adult social services department which suffers from this epidemic of service providers, but our schools, colleges, hospitals, police departments, in fact our whole nation has been gripped by this outrageous and dangerous disease.

ROBIN J EVANS, British National Socialist Party (address supplied).