IT is an important matter of perception by Bucks people that this county receives from the state a lower level of funding per capita than many other parts of the country for education and health.

This perception colours their perception of the Government and also affects their attitudes towards those providing education and health. This perception is correct.

Senior representatives of these authorities and our local politicians regularly make generalised statements about the fact that Bucks is underfunded in these areas. However, they rarely dignify the people of Bucks by offering justifications for the statements, ie, by offering facts which support the implication that we are being cheated. Their statements, nonetheless, create and reinforce the perceptions and beliefs of those who are prepared to believe that Bucks is being cheated that these perceptions are correct.

State funding of any service should be targeted fairly on need. Thus Bucks might receive a lower level of simple per capita funding than other authorities but only if the allocation principles based on need were fair. I believe the funding formulae which are used to allocate funds for education and health were, originally, established with the objective of achieving a fair allocation of limited funds based on need. I am not sure that this intended level of fairness was ever achieved and, based on the comments of those who know the way funds are currently allocated, I am convinced that the current methods of allocation are not fair.

But, like most contemporaries, I cannot know whether the system is fair because it is, effectively, impossible for the public to find out what the current basis for allocating state funds in relation to health or education is. It is not helped by civil servants, politicians and other worthies who can demand to know the current basis for allocating state funds in relation to health or education, never, apparently, bothering to do so. Instead they stand on their respective soap boxes promoting their causes by making emotive statements about the country being underfunded in the health and education areas. Who besides themselves are they helping by making these statements.

If we are being underfunded, it must be because the funding formulae are unfair. If so, then how? In what way are civil servants, politicians and other worthies taking action to correct the unfairnesses? And, if they are not unfair, what are the motives of these civil servants, politicians and other worthies in making their loud acclamations that the county is underfunded? Can one expect any of the civil servants, politicians and other worthies to respond to these questions? I don't think so it is so much easier to indulge in unproductive, bigoted sloganeering.

Lee Harte

Lower Road

Loosley Row