For blinkered politicians in the Westminster bubble, perhaps the country can be easily divided into neat new portions (Voters like councillors more than MPs – so why is Labour wasting time destroying local democracy?, 3 March). Urban centres will benefit because their local representatives can carry on supporting a reasonably homogenous area. But for the Isle of Wight, the prospect of integration with Hampshire is a disaster.
It’s bad enough that successive governments have been indifferent to our unique circumstances, happy to persistently underfund our schools and medical facilities, and overlook the catastrophic effect of excessively expensive ferry travel, while pouring billions into other cities’ transport. We have paid our taxes, yet it seems everyone else benefits from subsidies that we contribute to. Why should we now want to subsidise yet another decision-making machine over the water?
Polly Toynbee is right. We need smaller councils, not larger ones. Local town and parish councillors are closer to voters and far more likely to raise difficult questions in a local forum to find local solutions to local problems.
Yvonne Williams
Ryde, Isle of Wight
• The reduction in the number of councillors in the latest reorganisation is of a piece with the amalgamation of hospital trusts, the absorption of housing associations into ever larger conglomerates and, so far as Labour is concerned, the gradual elimination from council candidacy of those who might have a shadow in their past or too strong a hint of proletarian sympathies.
Mayors can be more easily bought off than council leaders because they can be singled out. The extent to which this is deliberate is debatable, but I’ve little doubt it’s a pleasing side-effect of the centralising tendencies to which governments in recent years have been addicted.
Robert Jones
Niton Undercliff, Isle of Wight
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