Kingsbridge has gone back to sleep I see – that didn’t take too long, did it?

The possibility of the rural district council’s latest pre-­prepared, unyielding master plan to develop the current recreational quay area of Kingsbridge town into a ­housing estate and a ­concrete planner’s doodle does not seem to move the ghost-like spirit of Kingsbridge to form any sort of watchdog group to ensure this universally unpopular style of council financial development is kept well away from the town.

Fast on its heels is the bad news that two council office areas are set to combine – why and what for is never precisely explained. Nor is the reason why our council tax may rise instead of remaining statutorily valued and matched to property and tasks in the Kingsbridge area.

The whole affair is too close to an Alice in Wonderland fable; West Devon Borough Council needs to manage its own affairs and not organise the obscuring of its own ills by amalgamating with South Hams District Council, nor by taking council positions at its inflated salaries – all to our detriment. This substantial political reorganisation requires an electoral vote – not on the nod from already elected ­councillors. Or perhaps I have missed something and lost the plot? Maybe it is the Local Government Act 2000 in action again that ensures public ­dissent gets us nowhere.

There is urgent need to ensure these persistent, arbitrary, open-ended increases in government office taxation/ council tax etc have clearly defined limitations that are defined by parliamentary debate and law. There are already limitations on a council tax rise – it is unlikely that this proposed crippling increase of £63 for the poorest will on examination be lawful.

There needs to be an awareness that extra taxation paid last year is not an indication that just a little extra squeeze is acceptable for the next. Such thinking goes on forever and is not justified. But it nevertheless gets applied, helping to destabilise society through acting as a prime mover for inflation.

Less unending football chat and idle over-the-garden-wall gossip by Kingsbridge people would be a small and useful contribution to being a town of creative citizens, instead of implant puppets destined to be on life’s treadmill to nowhere, paying for massive ego-trip developments planned by the few that are of low or no use to society at all.

Barry Vaughan

Townsend Close

West Alvington