OVER the last few months we have witnessed the debacle of the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and more recently the mess-up in the nominations for Mayor of London.

Locally, our elected councillors are always blaming the members of other political parties for problems in the borough.

Having lived in Bury all my life, and having been a ratepayer for 40 years, I feel that I am quite within my rights to say to the elected councillors that when we cast our votes for them, we did so in the firm belief that they would put the interest of the borough and all its residents first: party loyalty should not come into the equation.

I do not wish to suggest that all our councillors simply follow the party line, but those that are not capable of standing on their own two feet, with their own convictions, should think seriously about whether they should be standing at all in the forthcoming local elections.

R. C. BIBBY,

Holcombe Road,

Greenmount, Bury.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.