THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE?

These were the anguished faces of residents in Kent yesterday when the Council Tax bills hit the doormats. My own bill is £2034 for the year, comprising payments to Kent County Council, the local Borough and Parish Councils, the Kent Fire Authority and the Police. Kent County Council make up £1450 of the total, so it`s obvious that questions should be asked about where the money is going.

What we do know is that there are at least 10 `executives` being paid over £100,000 a year by Kent and that the Chief Executive is the highest paid Council official in the country with a staggering £230,000 a year. However, he refuses to say who the other executives are who are in receipt of a six figure salary (despite the fact that it`s hardly difficult to work out) citing the prospect that they may be `open to abuse` if their identities are revealed. Indeed, the Chief Executive himself claims that he `was almost abused` last year in a restaurant. It`s the kind of headline that the Isle of Wight County Press specialises in - "PEDESTRIAN ALMOST HIT BY CYCLIST" was one of their recent gems.

But there is a counter argument, of course, that suggests that it is the council taxpayers of Kent who are being abused by not being allowed to know how their cash is being squandered.

And so to the national scene, where the abuse of the taxpayer is so much worse. Some time ago, the Government very properly - and not before time - passed the Freedom of Information Act, designed, as it says on the tin, to allow taxpayers to find out how their taxes are spent by public bodies, including Parliament itself. For the last three years, attempts to discover the way in which MPs use their taxpayer funded`allowances`have been thwarted by repeated legal action instigated by the MPs themselves. Today we learn that the Speaker has once again appealed against a recent ruling to disclose the spending by 14 MPs from their allowances.

And who pays for the legal action, estimated at over £100,000 involved in this appeal? Why, the very same taxpayers who are supposed to be getting the information which the Speaker and his cronies seem determined to deny. Once again, in the parallel universe of officialdom, it is a scenario which defies not just belief, but also natural justice.

It used to be said that he who pays the piper calls the tune. Well, in some official quarters, the piper seems to play what he wants, whoever might be paying him.

In the meantime, I`m about to embark on an exhange of correspondence with those who demand I pay them £2,034 in the next year to question whether there aren`t areas where savings can be made. I confidently expect evasion, refusal, reluctance and for my intelligence to be insulted yet again. But then we don`t call the tune any more, do we?