THE rather graceless responses from three county councillors to a perfectly legitimate enquiry by a taxpayer is more worrying evidence of a failure to grasp why voting yourself a 19 per cent increase as you hack £20m out of services is not a good look.

Andy Beal, from Blackbird Leys, emailed 20 councillors asking them if they had voted through the significant increases to allowances and if they were then going to accept the extra cash.

Mr Beal is a taxpayer.

Every year the county council demands that he pay many hundreds of pounds so that it can function, with the threat of a prison sentence should he refuse.

A small fraction of that council tax goes towards paying the allowances councillors receive, so it is entirely within Mr Beal’s rights to ask these two questions and receive an honest answer.

Unfortunately two councillors – Kevin Bulmer and Rodney Rose, the deputy leader of the council no less – demanded that in return Mr Beal divulge details of his salary and pension. David Nimmo-Smith just asked: Why do you want to know?

Given the public anger at these increases already, such responses are staggering and not worthy of public representatives.

For a start, Cllrs Bulmer, Nimmo-Smith and Rose, Mr Beal works in the private sector. You do not pay his wages, but he does contribute to your allowances.

He did not receive his job through putting himself forward for election, the way you came to hold your positions.

Bluntly, how Mr Beal earns his pay is none of your business, but your attitude to the allowances is absolutely his because he and thousands of others fund them.

In his response to us, Mr Rose does make his case about why allowances should go up, stating he works 18 hours a day, six days a week. That is what he should be telling Mr Beal and all other taxpayers because there is a debate to be had about whether there is proper recompense for the demands on our councillors.

But by being so dismissive, the councillors lose the moral high ground and come across as arrogant, out of touch and open to accusations of being interested only in their own income, at the expense of the services they are now having to cut.