A RECENT letter from a correspondent made comment about how much better Southampton was run and its finances managed back in the days when it was a county borough.

Like that correspondent I too remember those days. The council was run by a mayor, a town clerk and a borough engineer; the councillors were local businessmen who had "made good" and were willing and able to put something back into the town where they had made their money. They were reimbursed probably only the legitimate expenses they incurred in carrying out their civic duties.

In those days there was only one "cabinet" – that was the government in Westminster. And there were certainly no "cabinet members" or chief executives collecting unrealistic and unaffordable salaries – in many cases more than their equivalents in the nation's government.

The government of Southampton City Council is now carried out by over-paid career politicians, many of them "party hacks" who have no connection or history with Southampton and use their "career" here only as a stepping stone to the bigger trough that is now national government.

Southampton's finances are a total shambles, the council's direction is ruled by party loyalties and towing the party line, and its profligacy and ability invariably to take ill-advised decisions is almost legendary.

Before it really is too late, let us have a return to good governance in the city of Southampton and (hopefully) a return to a city that we citizens can be proud of, with pavements that are not a danger to life and limb and inhabited by beggars, roads that are safe to drive or cycle on, a precinct where one can walk in safety and not run the risk of serious injury from cyclists and skateboarders who treat it as their own personal race track, affordable housing for its citizens as well as the enormous transient student population that seems to be the only part of the population the council takes any interest in.

Southampton: bright and pleasant go-ahead, forward-looking, desirable place to be in and a magnet for tourists? My foot!

Name and address supplied