LOCAL elections will be on us soon. A chance to have our say, whatever that means, but what a way to provide a local service provider.

If we were buying insurance or banking services or gas or electricity we wouldn't tolerate such an archaic procedure to make our choice then get stuck again with a product that takes so little account of what we want and charges so much for it. The Office of Fair Trading and other consumer watchdogs would be swamped with complaints. There would be questions on newsnight. Tony Blair himself would intervene, telling us nobody should be excluded from a fair deal and insist on a refund on the grounds that we had been "mis-sold" like he did with the pensions industry.

But if we're not careful we could be in for more of the same. Instead of debate on the true purpose of local charges there will be endless sniping by councillors and a lot of buck passing while council officers keep their heads down and tot up their pension entitlements. Then, when everybody is thoroughly turned off, we will be invited to select our managers from a list of outdated party politicos trotting out the same tired old cliches and canvassing on a platform which contains no reference to efficiency and value for money.

The language will be the same as last time; first year middle school in tone as though we can't be trusted to cross the street unless we're supervised and don't ask awkward questions. And this from a coterie which draws its expenses from a populace which has learned to say no to cronyism, GM foods, bad doctors and underperfoming railways.

We can say no to an underperforming council if we ask the right questions. What strategy do you have to slim down the operation and cut waste? Show us the plan to reduce the charges gradually over the next five years? At what point do you expect to stop dipping into our pockets to pay for mistakes? How soon can you switch expenditure from sexy projects to core services like maintenance and getting rid of the litter and dog waste? In other words do you expect to come into the 21st century by responding to the consumer and managing like every other provider has to do in these post inflationary times?

Or perhaps it needs John Prescott to come in and get the council out of its balloon and back on terra firma like he did with Richard Branson.

Fred Webster,

Vicarage Terrace,

Lancaster.

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