HOW much longer can we allow the Labour Party to run our county and our country? The shocking mismanagement of our public services deteriorates by the day.

How can one government department have more than 300 laptops stolen in just four years?

You'd have thought after one year of dozens going missing they'd deal with it. Two years? Three years?

Four years?

And all the time, they continue to leave the data on this equipment unencrypted. This is the same as any one of us sticking all our credit cards up on a wall with the pin number next to each and then advertising it.

In Durham, the Labour Party is squabbling like a bunch of unruly schoolchildren. It is washing its dirty laundry in public and failing to get on with the job of running County Durham and sorting out the unitary authority mess which it and its Government have forced upon us.

If you could be locked up for incompetence, the key would have been thrown away years ago on this Labour Government and its County Durham representatives.

Councillor Mark Wilkes, Liberal Democrat, Durham City Council.