THE flood of angry criticism against Children’s Secretary Ed Balls’ proposals to cut £2bn from the schools budget is justified. It is beyond belief that a Labour Education Minister can publicly propose axing up to 3,000 senior teaching posts, many of them deputy head teachers.

In addition, he intends merging some schools and selling prime sites to the private sector for more unwanted multistorey housing blocks.

Instead of destroying our children’s education opportunities, why not cut the escalating costs in national and local government?

With the devolvement of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we could reduce the number of British MPs by up to 200. Do we really need five MPs representing Middlesbrough, Stockton and Redcar and Cleveland?

In local government can we really justify or afford five councils in the Tees Valley costing millions of pounds of public money that duplicate vast numbers of top jobs paying up to £150,000 per annum?

If we had one unitary council covering all of Tees Valley we would dramatically reduce the number of top paid jobs and councillors.

Then we would be able to invest in much-needed public services and stabilise the soaring council tax.

Ken Walker, Independent councillor for Gresham, Middlesbrough