IN OFFICE just two weeks and already Labour has started as it means to go on. Wining and dining at the expense of Newport council taxpayers to inaugurate the new mayor. Labour councillors really need to get their act together and challenge their leadership – the old guard needs to realise that they have sniped for four years about austerity and refused to play their part in the running of council business, but here we are with a big shindig to celebrate “winning” back control of the council.

Labour didn’t have a manifesto as such, but somewhere the word “fairness” appeared. There’s not much fairness in expecting hard-pressed Newport residents to foot the bill here, though it is extremely generous of them to want to do so. Maybe Councillor Bright could extend the invitation to some of the Ringland people who voted him into office. Just to put it on record: No member of the Liberal Democrat group received an invitation to this jolly – but if they had it would have been declined. Politely, of course.

Carmel Townsend,