As we start the New Year, we must brace ourselves for the oncoming season of service cuts promised by the local authorities as a response to budget reductions, having tried to make internal cost savings etc, there is simply no alternative.

But just ponder on the following, a decade ago the county council employed fewer staff using £200m per annum less budget.

I realise that costs are increased due to inflation, but so are they reduced by about the same amount by better technology and efficiencies and one should cancel out the other.

The recent cost savings and staff reductions only got rid of the gross excesses of the previous years where most authorities seemed to be more concerned with empire building rather than cost effectiveness, leaving an awful lot of over-paid chiefs and fewer Indians.

The answer is to look at the private sector to formulate a plan to remove the flabby management and start working to in the budget, but still protecting the service as they were quite happily doing a decade ago. Why not take the easy way out and just turn a blind eye to where the problem is?

Michael Clarke, Kirkbymoorside