MIDDLESBROUGH Mayor Ray Mallon is right (Echo, Feb 2) – imposing the deepest cuts on the poorest areas is simply wrong.

But we knew this from the start, so why spend £15,000 on a report just to tell us what we already know?

The question is: what do we do next? Merely lambasting the Government will get us nowhere.

What is needed is reasoned argument and a strategy to win back at least some of the money we have lost.

Mr Mallon offers neither of these things.

Chris Foote-Wood, Prospective Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of Middlesbrough.