NEW LOOK, Debenhams and the Hitachi rail plant at Newton Aycliffe are three of the latest companies in the region to announce jobs casualties.

Even Middlesbrough's Disney store is putting Mickey Mouse on the dole.

But fear not, help is at hand from a different kind of Mickey Mouse set-up: the Tees Valley mayor and his team say there is a potential jobs bonanza on the cards.

Remember when they promised thousands of jobs years ago that never materialised? Well there's more of the same on the way –a whopping 20,000 of them.

And you can guarantee these won't materialize either.

The mayor wants to build the largest business park in Europe on the old SSI site and bring back steel making on land the authority doesn't even own.

In November 2018, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Britain's richest man who owns the Ineos chemical company, shunned the Teesside site which could have been the location for his 4x4 car plant as he described it as a ''contaminated muddy field with no road links – and no clear ownership of the land''.

Stephen Dixon, Redcar