THEY say lightning never strikes twice! The Scottish public must be horrified to hear of the latest events in North Lanarkshire, following the #3.4m deficit run up by Monklands Council in its final year (and still to be paid for), the alleged Internet access episode involving a senior councillor, who has now resigned the convenership, the row over the World Cup trip for councillors to St Denis, and now the direct works fiasco.

Council leaders run for cover and attempt to lay blame on paid officials. Yet it was at a council meeting last autumn that the assembled public in the gallery of the chamber heard an opposition councillor, who wished to question an official, loudly and rudely slapped down by one of the powerful cadre of conveners sitting in the front row.

''Ah'm the convener,'' he stormed. ''Ah run the department. Ah'll answer yir questions.'' It was perhaps significant that the conveners sat with their backs to the public - a sure aid to anonymity.

These councillors wanted the financial rewards and the power. Let them take the responsibility - and the consequences.

Wide press coverage of the events at direct works has already sparked the use of the sort of derogatory cartoons used to ridicule Monklands at the height of that affair. Yet again the citizens of the area are seen as a laughing-stock, but make no mistake, this is a catastrophic event, coming at this juncture.

The new council was supposed to shed the Monklands image. At a stroke, the council has now destroyed the aim of all the expensive promotional publicity, which it hoped would attract new industry to sites such as Ravenscraig and Gartcosh. The fallout will have grave implications for the future. What will potential investors make of such a shambles?

There must now be answers as to why no-one in the finance department queried such huge wage payments on a regular basis. The public must be told the identities of those in receipt of the grossly inflated - and frankly unachievable - wages, so that no cover-up is attempted. Those who pay council tax are ''shareholders'' in this business which, had it been privately run, would have gone to the wall long ago. Workers discuss their wages as a matter of course - in any job - and it must have been common knowledge that these excessive payments were taking place.

In a proper business environment, conveners would make a regular, cursory inspection of wages being paid, and stock-control levels. If #800,000 worth of stock has indeed gone missing - and that remains to be confirmed - if it is not a simple book-keeping ''slip-up'', we need to know where it has gone and who spirited it away. That will be a matter for the police.

At the root of this whole disaster is the fact that business people with expertise fail to find service as councillors an attractive proposition, as they did in the days of Progressives in the 1970s and earlier.

I almost felt sorry for Donald Dewar, assailed as he was on all sides by the media, with a face like thunder, as he struggled to control his rage on the news bulletin. His only realistic solution appears to be to send in commissioners to run the department concerned - or indeed more probably the entire council operation - until next May's elections.

Then it will be up to those voters who actually pay council tax - and are faced with meeting the deficit of #3.4m from Monklands, together with some #4m from this episode - to exact their revenge.

The irony is that the Monklands councillors were all re-elected to the new council, despite their suspensions for some 18 months from holding the Labour Party whip! Surely, after this latest farce, the voters will finally decide to rebel and elect a new administration?

Gordon M Lind,

25 Irvine Crescent, Coatbridge.

May 30.

I READ with interest Tommy Sheridan's letter, The truth about fraud (May 30), and suggest that instead of funding the DSS Benefit Integrity Project at a cost of #11.5m a year, the Government redeploy the money in order to finance a Local Authority Integrity Project.

Then, perhaps, there will not be plumbers being paid #54,000 a year and there will be money available to pay honours graduate teachers more than the starting salary of #14,362 a year and enough money to prevent Glasgow library staff from having to strike because of a reduction in their wages imposed by a Labour-controlled council.

Margaret M H Lyth,

26 Gardenside Street,

Uddingston.

May 30.