LABOUR’S council leader, Warren Morgan, regularly takes to the pages of The Argus to blame the government for all the tough decisions that he and his colleagues are having to make in order to balance the council’s budget.

However, most residents that I speak to simply want him to get on with the job of running an efficient and effective organisation.

Every council administration I can remember (even in the days of financial plenty, pre-2008) has complained about how hard done by it is, but no amount of whingeing will change anything.

As every household knows, you just have to get on and live within your means.

Cllr Morgan cites the council’s independent auditors to back up his case.

Yet they lay the blame fairly and squarely at the door of the council itself, which they say has high costs and has failed to reform and modernise sufficiently in recent years.

Cllr Morgan himself must take his share of the blame for this as it was he, time after time, in cahoots with the Green Administration, who blocked any meaningful reform proposals put forward by the Conservative Group and council officers.

At least Labour’s new Children’s Service Spokesman, Cllr Tom Bewick, seems to get it.

If only Cllr Bewick had been around for the last four years he might have persuaded his Labour colleagues to think beyond short-term political gain.

This might have prevented much-needed modernisation now having to be rushed through at break-neck speed in order simply to balance the books.