Bear faced cheek.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson so aptly put it, although at the moment the "credit crunch" is definitely running a close second. According to "One Island" things are so bad that they are impacting even on the Isle of Wight Council and are the primary cause of its (admittedly dire) financial difficulties.



Now, those who wrest a living from the real world may be forgiven for looking somewhat askance at this claim. After all, most of the Council's income is guaranteed and provided over three year periods by the Government, and the rest comes from their power to tax you and I up to 5% extra each year on the Council Tax. Debt is guaranteed by the Government and borrowing is therefore easy and cheap - no bank managers to worry about - and the so called "customers" are, in reality, service users with nowhere else to go.



Even inflation for the Council is lower than that experienced by industry and families, because most of it goes on staffing. For staff below senior management level, this year's pay increase is less than 2.5%, half of the Retail Price Index.



So how does anyone living in this financial Goldilocks world manage to foul up so badly? A clue might come from the fact that Pugh had to hire a team of external consultants to tell him that he was paying £1/2 million more in 6 figure salaries for fat cat non-jobs than similar small rural councils in the rest of the Country. Everyone knew but him, it would seem.



In the response form in "One Island", the various permutations of council tax rises and carefully selected service cuts (each deplorable, but, significantly, each only affecting a minority) are clearly designed to provide a "mandate" for the Great Leader to do a U-turn on the last few surviving manifesto promises from 2005, thereby bowing to "the will of the people".



My advice therefore is to vote for the lowest tax rise on offer, and in the large box at the bottom described as "other areas to look at" put "None of the above. Let's have a basic level of competence and efficiency instead."

Controversial I know, but worth a try...........