AS a council taxpayer in the Swindon Borough Council I feel compelled to write to put in context your headlines and accompanying photograph in your edition on Wednesday, June 18.

The cost of settling the firefighters' dispute is not anything like the reason for an 8.5 per cent increase in council tax. It's spurious of Mike Bawden to suggest it.

What about the Council? Is there anything else they would like to blame the firefighters for?

Perhaps it is the fault of the firefighters that Swindon Borough Council has been named by the Government as among the worst performing in the country?

Or maybe the simple truth is that the council leaders are just no good at what they do.

What about the MPs? Is there anything else our MPs would like to blame the firefighters for?

Perhaps the war in Iraq, the cabinet reshuffle, Cherie Blair's trying to protect her family, the cost of student housing in Bristol.

The facts (that's the truth before spin for those that have forgotten) are that the 32 per cent council tax rise over the past two years isn't the fault of the firefighters, neither is the 8.5 per cent council tax rise for this year nor the 21.3 per cent rise predicted for the two years following this one.

During the fire service industrial dispute the then council leader Kevin Small said in an interview on local radio that the council couldn't justify a two per cent increase in council tax to pay a 40 per cent wage rise for the fightfighters.

Now it suddenly seems that the firefighters' wage settlement of only maybe 16 per cent (dependant upon cost savings) and which is only payable over several years is a major contributor to an 8.5 per cent council tax rise this year.

You might like to know that the current cost of your fire service equates to £1.39 per household per week.

To pay the full 16 per cent after several years don't forget will only add an extra 16 pence per household per week to the current council tax bill and that is only if the wage rise is going to be met by the local authority, which the government is saying it isn't. Perhaps Julia Drown can explain?

I suggest that the four per cent for this year the firefighters will actually get would not only have already been largely provided for in this years existing budget (assuming firefighters were ever going to get an annual pay rise), but it also equates to only four pence per household per week.

Have the firefighters been shafted? Oh yes. Are they bitter? Very probably, but they are hardly a major contributor to an 8.5 per cent rise in council tax are they?

P J PAYNE

Shaw Ridge