I would appreciate the opportunity to express my thanks to those people in Middlewich Cledford Ward who voted for me in the Congleton Borough and Middlewich Town Council elections last week. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure a seat on either council. Nevertheless, I appreciate the faith shown in me by those electors, and give my assurance that I will try again in the future.

As justification of that faith, and for the benefit of those people who were more suspicious of me, wondering why a party seen as simply opposing to the EU was getting involved in local elections, may I also make the following observations? If you think the influence of a developing federal Europe does not affect your daily lives, then consider the following The EU is forcing our councils to empty your bins once a fortnight. This stems from the EU Landfill Directive of 1999. This enforces a reduced dependency on landfill with fines for every ton of waste over the stringent limits they have imposed, those fines reaching £150 per ton by 2010. Already, the UK has been fined almost £1bn, all paid, of course, by the local council taxpayers. And so to reduce the level of these fines, councils are having to try to force us to recycle instead - hence bi-weekly collections, spy cameras in bins, and financial penalties for putting the wrong rubbish in the wrong bin.

If those big brother tactics are not enough to raise your blood pressure, consider the recent actions of Haringey Council in London. They have hired a light aircraft, equipped with military spy technology to take thermal images of heat escaping from every building in their area with the aim of shaming homeowners into improving insulation. How soon do you think it will be before other councils follow suit, and start imposing fines on those homeowners they consider to be wasting energy.

A blow to those councils hoping to attract EU grants for some of their pet local projects - the EU has put regional grants on hold. The EU Commission has suspended funds to the North West, North East, Yorkshire and Humberside, London and West Midlands, because they say there is a lack of proper controls over paying agencies. This from an organisation whose accounts have never been signed off since 1994.

Of course, in the overall scheme of things, the regional development grant is nothing to write home about. Britain has to pay the EU £14bn per year. Yet in 2005, the European Development Fund put 2bn into the UK - that equates to about 10 per cent of our £14bn, and then we only get it if we fill in all the right forms, and beg for it. I wonder how many of you would accept such an arrangement with your own funds.

These are not some off-the-cuff comments of someone with an axe to grind because he did not get elected - I can produce the full reports from which they were obtained for anyone who would like to see them, and others in similar vein - just email me at alanjohnson994@btinternet.com and I will be pleased to forward them.

I am genuinely concerned for the democratic future of this country. Edicts from Brussels and Whitehall are being imposed upon our local councils, and the views of the electorate virtually ignored. Take the question of car park fees - central government is forcing this issue on our local councils and most likely they will yield to that pressure, because it is easier than fighting. Such is the way democracy is lost.

ALAN Johnson, UKIP Candidate