Dear West Briton,

Cornwall, like the rest of the country and, indeed, the planet faces some formidable challenges in the next few years - we are not out of recession, we have a housing crisis, we face resource depletion and, most importantly, we must urgently deal with climate change.  It does not fill me with confidence when our unitary councillors seem to spend a good deal of their time and energy on in-fighting and the blame game (West Briton letters 4th and 11th March).  Thankfully, I have political allegiance to neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats - if I did I would find their behaviour embarrassing.  As it is, given that the bulk of Cornwall councillors are drawn from their ranks, I should like them to stop their petty squabbling over who was right and wrong regarding the finances of the changeover to unitary status and start listening to and supporting the people of Cornwall, many of whom are working hard to secure a future for our lovely county that does not involve developers, major retailers and concreting over as much of the countryside as possible. It is not acceptable that decisions are taken along party lines - Cornwall is not a political football to be kicked around by these people.
I agree that the electorate need to know how money is being spent and, in particular, what the highly paid executives are getting  from public funds and how many over paid consultants are being employed to do the work that council officers could be doing.  We should also know how many less well paid staff are facing pay cuts and redundancies or forced to take on extra duties due to job cuts.

What this council now must do is to build on the strengths of Cornwall in terms of its wealth of natural energy sources - and the Green Cornwall Programme, recently published, is an admirable start.  It must deal with the lack of housing for local need - and not by jumping into bed with developers but by building small local developments in existing communities, such as the recently occupied houses in Perranporth, and encouraging Community Housing Trusts.  It must deal with the transport issue, not by concreting over waste swathes of countryside for park and ride schemes, but by reliable and imaginative public transport.  It must re-invigorate the economy by encouraging small-scale sustainable businesses - in  food, energy, recycling and people who mend things.  It must encourage our local food producers, who are fundamental to our future. That means not selling off council owned farms, but keeping them for the tenancy of young people just coming into agriculture, who have the energy and drive to experiment, and encouraging established farmers without whose wisdom and experience we would be lost and hungry.

I trust that the letter pages of the West Briton will no longer be taken up with accusations and recriminations - what is done is done.