I HAD planned to take this year off of politics – something I’m sure a great deal of people would also like to do – but I was sufficiently irked by a Lib Dem flyer that I felt I had to call the offending councillor out.

The flyer berates the Conservative run county council for everything under the sun, from blaming it for potholes, to saying that council tax rises have been too high, to blaming the council for things it doesn’t even control like QA Hospital and generally demanding more spending in the county. May I ask councillor Roger Price where he discovered this money tree from?

Councillor Price knows he can say whatever he wants – he’s promising to spend more money and yet tax people less. This is obviously impossible. He knows he will never have to justify any of it because the Lib Dems will never be in power to have to make these difficult decisions. It was this reckless disregard for public finances that got us in this situation in the first place.

How does he propose we spend more but tax less? He’s living in a fairytale world. Sadly, the residents of Portchester do not, and councillor Price’s policies would see our area plunged into massive debt, which our children and grandchildren will someday have to repay, with interest.

Councillor Price is promising the world but he has absolutely no means of delivering it. What he is suggesting is a huge budgetary black hole. In reality, this is a schoolboy error too often seen in local politics. What I don’t understand is his need to stay on anyway. He’s been around a very long time, but surely if he has not achieved what he came into politics to achieve 40 years ago, then it’s probably time he admits it’s not going to happen and let someone else have a go.

I understand it’s election season and people are making all sorts of wild promises, but I would like to ask Councillor Price to please explain his proposals and where he plans to get the funding for them and what other services he’s going to cut if he has any hope of balancing the books.

Tom Davies

Fareham