I’M not one of these people who constantly point their fingers at councils and accuse them of wasting taxpayers’ money.

Waste is, after all, a relative concept.

Give or take a few chief executives, the amount of cash spent on local administrations pales in significance when you compare it to the million quid an hour dumped into the EU black hole.

Worcester’s City Life magazine is an example of money, if not wisely, then reasonably spent. It’s a bulletin that obviously cannot compete with the impartial news service provided by this newspaper, yet nevertheless gives us some insight into the minutiae of council thinking.

Leader Simon Geraghty talks at length in the autumn edition about the financial pressures facing the city and quite rightly cites the Government’s inadequate grant settlement and its failure to cost the pensioners’ concessionary travel scheme as being at the root of the problems facing Worcester.

But why should the Government care? The more Tory councils get into trouble then it’s all the better for them.

And if the long-suffering taxpayers are the ultimate losers, then tough luck.