COUNCILLOR Connolly in last week's Bury Times ('We're doing all we can to balance the books', Letters, December 15) and at the last council meeting on December 14 infers that I am a shopkeeper and writes that 'running a council is not like running a shop'.

For very many years I have been successfully running shops and our customers only keep returning to them because we offer a first class service, good products and excellent value for money.

I believe that when running a council one should also offer first class service, excellent products and value for money which is rightly demanded by our council tax payers.

So I disagree with Coun Connolly (who has no experience of running a shop) in that there are similarities between the two.

Let us examine the recent record of this Labour council.

Over recent years your council tax bills have increased by two, three, or four times the rate of inflation, year after year after year.

Despite protests by members of the public the council intended to make serious cuts to services provided to our children of Bury at the Re:d Centre and were only stopped by a legal process.

Within the last few months many members of staff of Bury MBC were made redundant as a result of council overspending.

At the last budget setting meeting of the council in February Coun Campbell (the current leader) assured us that although the situation then was unacceptable, steps would be taken and procedures put in place to ensure that this 'would not happen again' but it is happening again.

The current situation is much worse. Labour, having closed Bury General Hospital, now wants to close Fairfield Maternity Unit and possibly Accident and Emergency.

Labour Councillors protest at this but these protests are nought but crocodile tears of hypocrisy because it is Labour who is running our country and our borough of Bury.

Labour has up to four of our secondary schools on its hitlist for closure - they hear the protests of parents but do not listen.

With a minor alteration in the system of funding I believe that all of our good schools can remain open without any additional overall cost to the Government, even if projections of falling numbers of pupils into the future are correct.

There are huge projected overspends this year and undoubtedly increased borrowing which we will all be paying for now and years into the future.

Reports tell us that once again it is the employees of Bury MBC who will be paying for this with their jobs and many jobs will be lost.

This letter is factual. It is not intended for purposes of scaremongering and what I have written is the truth.

There is a view that 'do unto others what they do unto you'.

As they are increasing the number of redundancies let us together make Labour in Bury redundant at the local elections next May.

COUN PETER REDSTONE

Finance Spokesperson

Conservative Group

Bury MBC