Financial stability and competence are essential to the provision of the public services provided to taxpayers by Government, either Nationally or Locally.
Without both life becomes both difficult and all too often costly or even unaffordable. In the period between May 2013 and May 2017 Labour, propped up by a voting deal with the Liberals, were in control of Lancashire County Council.
They inherited a strong financial position and good service levels from the previous Conservative administration, but by 2016 had run the finances down - to such an extent that the Labour Leader was confidently forecasting the Council would be bust within three years.
This unfortunately is a theme that recently has been played out again in a number of Councils, mainly Labour, but with a much smaller number of Conservative run ones too.
The two major casualties - both Labour - were Birmingham and Nottingham. Birmingham as usual tried to blame lack of Government financial help for their woes, but their Party's biggest supporter, Unison, disagreed and pinned the blame on the Council's financial incompetence, which it very clearly was.
The result was a tax rise of 10% and huge cuts in service levels, including highways. In Lancashire in 2016, the Labour solution was to ask an international firm of accountants, at great expense to you, what they should do.
Given a range of options they chose, amongst others to close dozens of libraries, slash subsidised bus routes, and cut the highways budget. Since we took over in 2017 we have stabilised the finances and improved the services they left in near ruin.
We understand that you demand nothing less than a fair Council tax rate and good service levels, and we intend to keep on delivering exactly that.
So when it is time to vote, please compare our record at Lancashire County Council to that of Labour the last time they ran this Authority, when catastrophe was but months away, and they openly admitted it was.
