IT is utterly ridiculous asking councils to self regulate their demise. These “executives” have their snouts deeply entrenched in the trough and have no desire to pull them out.

The Assembly government has shown no leadership here and, in my opinion, the cuts don’t go far enough. There should only be five councils in Wales.

The five councils should be Gwent (Caerphilly, Newport, Monmouthshire, Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent), East Glamorgan (Cardiff, Vale, RCT and Merthyr) , West Glamorgan (Swansea, NPT and Bridgend), Dyfed-Powys (Carmarthenshire, Powys, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire), Clwyd-Gwynedd (Flintshire, Wrexham, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire and Anglesey).

These councils would each then have responsibility for between 500,000 and 750,000 people which is a far more even spread, population wise, than the current 250,000 down to 60,000.

Surely this is the very thing that the Welsh Assembly should be leading. It’s time the Welsh Assembly got a grip and stopped allowing councils to waste so much of our money on 22 bloated managerial structures.

Julian Marchant, Pen y Glog Road, Llandegfedd