I am sure that many of your readers will be as confused as me by Islington Council’s recent decisions on the PlusBus service, which helps thousands of elderly people.

Islington Labour councillors claim they are against cuts and for public services. Yet the council they run is making unnecessary cuts to vital services while wasting money on pet projects. At the last council meeting, a petition with 300 signatures from the Peel Centre in Clerkenwell was presented calling on the council to save the PlusBus. Liberal Democrats offered ruling Labour councillors a way to save it by scrapping the council’s residents’ magazine instead.

But Labour councillors voted against this idea preferring to keep their glossy magazine to saving a vital bus service for old people. It has been revealed that council has spent �39,000 on new furniture in just one office, �5,000 on a new carpet outside the council chamber and �2,000 to attend a lavish awards dinner at a Mayfair hotel.

Now PlusBus users are in limbo not knowing if their service has been axed or not. The Mayor of London has offered to fund most of the service for the next two years if the council makes up the difference. But Labour councillors will not commit to this. What a way to treat Islington’s elderly. – Councillor Terry Stacy, leader, Islington Liberal Democrats.