Some residents have all the luck

IN their spat about councillors and cash, M Batson claims that some councillors are simply doing the job in order to line their pockets, whilst Councillor Duggins indignantly says that councillors deserve every penny they get.

He also points out, quite rightly, that they don’t get that many pennies anyway.

I have had a fair bit to do with councillors over the past few years across the city and across the political spectrum and in my experience, some of them are worth their weight in gold.

They put in long and often unsociable hours, work hard on behalf of the communities they represent for not very much in the way of financial return, are eternally civil in the face of questioning, hold their regular surgeries and get equally regularly badmouthed whatever they do.

We should all be grateful to such councillors for ploughing on regardless. If your councillors are like that, you are the lucky ones.

Conversely, of course, there are some who don’t do those things. Some are not seen in their wards or their communities from one election year to another (nor do they reply to emails) and you have to wonder why they wanted to become councillors in the first place, given the awful and demanding job that it actually is and the obvious lack of commitment with which they do it.

For some, presumably, the role might be seen as a foot on the bottom rung towards higher things; for others there might be a status factor. For some, too, I suppose, there might just be some networking opportunities which might be made to work to advantage. If your councillors are like that, you are the unlucky ones.

Though remember, they must have won an election to be a councillor at all! If more complainers actually voted in local elections, things might be better.

Most councillors fall somewhere between the two extremes. But I am confident that none of them in any group is about to jet off to the Bahamas on loot trousered from their councillors’ pay and expenses. George Moore Stoke