Once again, as reported in the Sutton Guardian (Lowest grant will mean cuts, December 7), we are being treated to the annual softening-up' exercise by Lib-Dem controlled Sutton Council in readiness for yet another massive hike in council tax next April.

Has it never occurred to Councillor Drage and his free-spending (with our money) colleagues that cuts of £5.5million should be just what the doctor ordered here?

Not cuts of course to the elderly and deprived, something the Lib-Dems are very good at doing year in year out, but cuts in the sheer waste of tax-payers money that is being squandered in this borough on a daily basis.

For instance, do we really require a media department that costs around £1m per year to spew out propaganda and the largely unread Sutton Scene six times per year?

Are we really that pathetic that we jump every time Mayor Livingstone barks and hand his Transport for London organisation millions of pounds per year, to get back a small fraction of that and call it good value?

Will the Lib-Dems not follow our line, as detailed in our manifesto last May, and consider making cuts to councillors' allowances? We proposed an annual saving of £100,000 per year through quite simple measures.

I believe Sutton shopmobility is still under threat because the Lib-Dems can't afford' to fund them to the tune of £50,000.

Everywhere one goes in this borough one sees the signs of waste and profligacy.

If payment were made on results then Coun Drage and the rest of his Lib-Dem colleagues would probably all owe us a tax rebate.

Coun David Pickles Conservative member for Belmont Ward Sutton