His attempt to attack the community action group for daring to pursue the democratic process has done little to ease the parish taxpayers' scepticism of the town council's governance .

The unresolved and bitterly disputed figure of £5,865 legal costs, allegedly owed by the action group, actually amounts to little more than one per cent of the precept hike.

Mr Upson could have spelled this out but instead chose to state the disputed sum had contributed to the town council's inflation-busting 3.9 per cent increase in the precept.

Does he think every citizen of this parish is numerically illiterate? Well, for what it's worth, I and many others in this community will be more than willing to pay the disputed amount, if this is the price of  democracy.

Does Mr Upson believe that everything that HTC declares should be obeyed without question? As much as he seems to aspire to this sort of ideology, I don't think such power has yet been bestowed upon him. This is not the first time that HTC has attempted to silence 'non-conformists'.

A 15-minute public question session before each HTC meeting was removed from the agenda, apparently because parish taxpayers were asking the same annoying democratic questions.

For far too long now there appears to have existed a culture of unchallenged decision making that's been allowed to manifest itself at the heart of HTC.

Undoubtedly the MPs' expenses scandal has served to greatly sharpen the taxpayers' focus on all aspects of government, right down to local level.

Clearly some decisions need to be challenged, along with a close and constant scrutiny of our decision-makers and – as we supposedly still live in a democracy – scrutinise and challenge we will.

M Wild
Wortley Place
Hemsworth