I AM grateful to Cllr Peter McDonald for re-establishing my faith in him as a 'never mind the quality feel the width' person in his letter of June 28. He never lets facts get in the way of a good story and if he can further ingratiate himself and his group with his Conservative cronies, so much the better.

He conveniently forgot to mention in his letter decrying the Independents on Bromsgrove Council that I went to the people of Alvechurch three years ago as an Independent and won.

Cllr McDonald also has a convenient lapse of memory when he claims Independent councillors had no objection to the iniquitous parking charges imposed on the disabled and senior citizens by the Conservative group. We did.

Yet another lapse of memory, but it makes a good story, is his claim the Independent group 'do nothing' and 'add nothing to the running of the council. He forgot to mention the considerable input Independents have to every committee his good friend Cllr Hollingworth is forced by law and proportionate representation to allow us to serve on and if we did nothing else, we very successfully made both of them and their political groups back off from trying to force through the obscene 20 per cent rise in councillors' allowances.

For nearly 20 years I have observed Cllr McDonald fighting for the Labour cause in Bromsgrove. Whilst he has very often got his facts wrong and has many times been abusive, offensive and devisive, in my opinion there was always a dogged honesty about his faith in Labour principles and his steadfast opposition to conservative dogma, politics and blind party directed voting. Not any more.

The Labour group, by pandering to the conservatives and if not always voting with them certainly not often voting against them are awarded chairmanships and vice-charimanships and have even been allowed back into the official opposition group room. I believe it is looked upon as cross party co-operation.

If the end results were an improved administration, that would be acceptable.

Slightly sad and distasteful, but acceptable. however, the end results are far removed from a well run council, and still this administration plays party politics and encourages personal axe-grinding. One has to speculate what the end result will really be.

Jean Luck

Independent Cllr

Bromsgrove District Council