MR C D Park?s letter (April 22). The cost of bureaucracy and council tax is an excellent expression of what most of us feel.

Strong government, whether at local, national or (heaven forfend) European level, cannot exist if the governing administration is a split or hung one. Provided there is an effective means of dismissing a council, national government or supranational body that is failing the people, it is better to have a clear cut majority party in power, however briefly, so that no one party of a coalition can blame its associates if things go wrong.

Consider the prospect that we face should the system of proportional representation spread. Spread? Yes it is here, because on June 10 the European elections will not give you the option of voting for a candidate or candidates but for a party with a list of candidates (in party approved pecking order) and the number of candidates elected will be determined not by the number but by the proportion of the votes cast for each party.

This has two effects: it removes the already tenuous connection between the individual voter and the candidate(s) elected: it encourages the emergence of single-issue and maverick vote; this tends to make it unlikely that there will ever be a party with a workable majority.

The conclusions? 1. Locally we must seek to elect a council with a controlling majority ? and hold their party responsible for their errors.

2. We must resist to the uttermost suggestions (mostly Lib Dem and increasingly Labour) that proportional voting be applied to our national government ? our ?first past the post? system is infinitely preferable and least likely to produce a hung (weak) government.

3. Since Brussels has ordered us to adopt its cockeyed system for EU elections we are stuck with it for the moment. We really must not allow ourselves to become any more closely linked to their crackpot governmental schemes of any sort. The watchword is not unite, but untie, Europe.

Geoffrey M Stowell

The Laurels

The Down

Bere Alston