Latest Private Eye Rotten Boroughs - This Council

In its treatment of both its staff and the constituents it claims to represent, this council has obviously taken a leaf out of the book of the Stasi in former East Germany: You will do as we tell you, whether you want to or not. What mugs you all are to even consider that we are here for your benefit.

This is the thinking of the control freaks and the petty little dictators who are in jobs that they aquired by ambition only and not by ability. That's the trouble with having too much ambition; you end up in a job that you're incapable of doing, and thus cause chaos and misery to those below you. You also squander taxpayers' money, knowing of course that there's no accountability either, so you get away with appalling waste.

Thus we have the situation of council staff being forced into situations bred of incompetence and self-glorification by the upper echelons, who of course will suffer none of the indignities that they themselves heap upon their minions.

This applies equally to the elected bunglers in the council chamber, who time after time prove that their sole concern is for their own interests. We thus have a deadly combination of the electorate and the council staff being stuffed from both sides at once by bungling incompetents who probably couldn't run a bath let alone run a borough.

I believe that this situation is set to get worse as the Tory imposed cuts take effect. There'll be even less money around, but an even greater opportunity for these bunglers to impose their will upon the rest of us. Democracy in RCT? Like the rest of Britain since the financial debacle that the ignorant financiers were the cause of, we are also subject to an increasing clampdown on free speech and action.

Our soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq to bring democracy to those blighted lands, at least that's the official line anyway. I think they need to start a little closer to home, like right here in RCT and all the other equally blighted areas of Britain. Maybe the Afghans and the Iraqis ought to take a look at our version of so-called democracy before they embrace it. They might have a different opinion of its benefits after that.

Notice too how across the Middle East and Africa people are rising up to demand free speech and action, whilst if this council of ours is anything to go by, attempts are being made to turn the clock back to the repressive times of Dickensian Britain. Those people are fighting and dying for freedom, whilst our council, and its counterpart in the wider picture of Westminster government, are intent on snatching hard won freedoms from us.

What an example to set to the rest of the world eh?