A letter thudded onto my doormat from Wokingham District Council. It told me my house had been selected as part of a house condition survey by the Council, and it asked me to co-operate with a surveyor who wished to come and inspect it, along with many others.

Knowing how expensive house surveys are when you buy or sell, I was surprised by this. The Council are always telling me that they are short of money. We certainly need more spent in our schools and on respite care in the District. The Liberals who have taken control by taking the Chairmanship and the casting vote should make it a priority to ask why we have money to burn on a household survey when we seem to be short for more important purposes. The same Council then decided to waste more of our money on designing a new logo!

There is a general mood in government at local and national level that we the voters should have all the answers and they the majority Council groups and ministers should do what the focus groups tell them. It's a stupid way of behaving. We elect governments, local and national, to make decisions for us. They hire the experts and take advice from their officials. We do not want to have to pay twice, also paying to take our own advice.

I have some advice for the new Wokingham Council. Scrap all the focus groups and surveys. The elected Councillors show know, from talking to us all during the election, what the issues are. We now need some action. We want some action to help us get around the District more easily. We want some action to improve school standards. We ant some action to keep the Council tax down. It is possible to do all these things, if you inject some commonsense into the system. I am tired of watching incompetent ministers asking the public and trying to blame us when things go wrong.

I wish Wokingham's new Council every success in showing us it can be done differently. But I don't think I want to spend my time joining in a house survey, especially as I don't want to help pay the bill for it in the first place. I would rather have a decent road to the station and better train services. Many of my constituents would rather have a better school or better care. These are the true priorities.