IN MY local ward’s recent meeting, councillors were attempting to explain all the work involved in the production of a locally-produced manifesto based on the delayed information on local budgets from Whitehall.

In my usual helpful manner, and in an attempt to save them all from working over the Christmas holiday period, I put forward the following motion: “In view of the perceived success of Ukip, why do we not adopt their procedures for a ‘flexible manifesto’.”

This would give us the small job of coming up with solutions suitable for a specific issue. Then when one area criticises it, you amend or delete it. You could then cover all shades of opinion, with hopefully the minimum of upset.

To my surprise no one agreed it. Guess they realised that you can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

The letter of November 25 from Judith Morrison illustrates my point better than I could.

Liz Edge, Parkside Close, York.