Council could have cut even more off tax bill

COUNCIL tax bills in Caerphilly County will rise by 4.7% from April.

That is an improvement on the original 6.95% proposed by the Labour-run authority.

But if Labour had accepted proposals from Plaid Cymru they would have been able to trim another 1.2% off the council tax increase without impacting on services.

Cutting the council tax rise by another 1.2% would mean around £600,000 more having to be found. We identified areas within finance where this can be done, such as withdrawing savings in advance of £475,000. This was originally proposed by Labour and has no impact on front-line services.

For many people council tax is one of the top monthly bills they are faced with. We should be reducing the impact on them as much we possibly can. I regularly meet many people relying on food banks, even those who have more than one job. Many residents are still struggling to get pay rises after a decade of austerity, so the council can and should be doing more to help them.

We are pleased that the Labour group drew back from many cuts in frontline services which we highlighted as unacceptable and should never have been proposed in the first place. This included massive cuts to voluntary groups, axing CCTV and shutting the Trehir civic amenity site.

Colin Mann,

Leader, Plaid Cymru Group, Caerphilly County Borough Council

What sort of God allows this misery?

DIANE BOTTO’S letter intrigued me (“We need to connect with God again”, Echo, February 26). She states she no longer watches BBC television because of the bad language and the bad example it sets to young people.

THIS leads me to assume that she considers only the BBC to be responsible for what she describes as “the moral decline in Britain” and she is quite content to watch the other terrestrial channels. Wonder what she thinks of Naked Attraction on Channel 4?

She then goes on to claim that we should start thinking about Almighty God and then trots out the usual pious platitudes, including the suggestion we should pray to this God of hers for relief of all the recent disasters in the world.

This set me thinking. Isn’t this the very God that allows all these terrible disasters to happen? Couldn’t this all-powerful entity have stopped them happening in the first place? The answer to that is... yes, this socalled God could certainly have prevented them but chose not to. Personally I want nothing to do with a God like that.

In 2016 a crowd were praying in a Nigerian church when suddenly the roof fell in, killing 160 people and maiming and seriously injuring many more. I’ve no idea what sort of message the God was sending to the congregation that awful day, but I

Many residents are still struggling to get pay rises after a decade of austerity... Colin Mann, Plaid Group leader, CCBC