Do your duty and serve us we hear that?

It was very much in vogue in the days of the MPs’ expenses scandal, for none of them had done anything wrong! And what about the bankers who sought to make a quick buck and sometimes succeeded and sometimes brought down a bank? And the phone hackers?

Now we have it from the deputy leader of Herefordshire Council after the undemocratic cabinet voted to sell all the county’s smallholdings.

The formula means they acted within the rules so there is nothing you can do about it.

In February, when gearing up for the county elections, council leader Tony Johnson was quoted as saying “I enjoy the whole business of council work”.

But do councillors understand the purpose of council work? It is to provide services to the community and to provide them by provident housekeeping; it’s no good blaming a Tory government which gave fair warning that it would drastically reduce local government grants.

So, instead of not doing anything wrong how about starting to do things right. They could start with the library service which was in excellent shape under Hereford and Worcester County Council. Does anyone on the council know the range of services provided by the library and how they interact with other departments?

The archive service may not have had state-of-the-art accommodation but it provided a valuable service; now it has the accommodation, but what has become of the service?

How about the grant to the Courtyard? And the CAB – a much-valued service provided by an outside organisation so they want to take away its grant and provide an in-house service. Yet they have an in-house library service which is being destroyed presumably in the hope that it will be provided by an outside organisation.

It’s time the council stopped building unwanted roads and using expensive outside advice and used the brains of its own professional staff to fulfil its statutory obligations.

F MILLIGAN Church Road, Hereford