Start by making cuts at the right level

This article is an insult to the intelligence of the adults of the borough, and would be considered patronising by a class of 13-year-olds.

Mr Akhtar makes much of the cuts he envisages making to the lower paid grades within the authority, ignoring the fact that Labour got the country into the mess in the first instance, and yet suggests it should be allowed to put things right, and that Labour locally has got this borough into £600m debt by the end of 2012. On top of this we now pay £10.7m per year for 20 years to private finance companies.   

So let me guide Mr Akhtar in the direction of few more imaginative cuts. In the real world cutting has been a fact of life for some years, as have wage freezes and falling income levels.

We currently have 63 elected councillors, who last year in salary and benefits trousered £1.12m. If we were to cut the number by a third they would not be missed, as most contribute no more than a knat’s nadger towards the benefit of this borough. We employ a chief executive who earns £160k in salary plus benefits, and has had to be told to go along with his social services director, by senior Labour politicians, to explain his shortcomings as a leader and manager of the executive team. If we employed a CEO at half the salary, Rotherham could get someone with twice the ability, and who would at least know right from wrong. 

So Mr Akhtar, get real, let the cutting begin but start at the right level within the organisation, there are many more jobsworths to go. If you need further direction with the task I would be more than pleased to assist. My experience is both wide and varied and I have managed people globally. 

The low paid are finding it difficult enough to find work as it is. Once again it was Labour who deliberately created a low wage economy, and now wishes to compound the situation by bringing in more low paid competition from around the country, and Easter Europe into Rotherham. 

The low paid front line troops should not feel the pain of your bungled profligacy; it is neither desirable, necessary nor acceptable. 

Allen Cowles, Whiston