THE borough council's ruling Conservative group will earn few thanks for its decision to raise next year's council tax by 9.5 per cent an extra £75 a year on a Band D property.

But painful though this increase will be for some Swindon families the important question revolves around whether it should be several percentage points bigger.

The council, which has battled for years against the effects of poor financial treatment by successive governments, is getting yet another seriously inadequate cash allocation for next year.

Council leader Mike Bawden has already warned that cuts will be inevitable. This means the budgets for education, social services and the voluntary sector which are already stretched at the seams are not likely to escape further cloth trimming.

This town needs and deserves better treatment. And our civic leaders and Swindon's two MPs must make it abundantly clear to the politicians and Whitehall civil servants who manoeuvre the zip on the Treasury purse that the people who live here could well refuse to forgive this latest failure to provide adequate and fair funding.

In the meantime we must accept that if we want the services to which we believe we are entitled we are going to have to pay more for them ourselves.

Have courage Coun Bawden. Should you stop at 9.5 per cent?

INEVITABLY some people will criticise the fact that £375,000 is being spent on art works for Swindon's Great Western Hospital.

So we are glad to be able to report that not a single penny of this money will be siphoned from patient care or general health spending. People who run the grant-giving organisations and the hospital's own private Evolution Appeal have the satisfaction of knowing they have helped to lift people's spirits.

When you feel ill few things are more depressing than walls covered only with bland institutional paint.