I REFER to the letters November 12 from councillor Nick Martin and Mrs E McKendrick which replied to my letter of November 4 concerning Halloween entertainment.

To Coun Martin I respond accordingly: The Park South community group's (voluntarily organised) celebrations were cancelled on health and safety grounds. This implies that council officers failed to ensure proper safety standards and were therefore negligent.

Costs for the council-run event were described as marginal yet it took three publicly-funded groups of officers from the Parks Ranger Service, the Museum Service and the Sixth Sense Drama Group to organise and run this event.

Repeated marginal costs of this nature soon start to equate to substantial sums of money.

Coun Martin and his colleagues have gained control of the council because the previous administration failed to listen, persistently raised council tax, wasted resources and neglected essential services.

The public do not want more of the same.

As for Mrs McKendrick, she failed to understand the contents of my letter since I made no reference whatsoever to the cancellation of any festivities. The essence of my argument was that precious public resources should not be spent on extravagant entertainment when essential services have a severe shortage of funds.

I hope Mrs McKendrick thoroughly enjoys her Christmas festivities or any other religious festivity which she chooses to celebrate but please do not expect your jollities to be subsidised out of an extremely deficient public purse.

(Mrs) E FELL

Wroughton