COUNTY council leader Keith Mitchell asks where would I make the cuts (Oxford Mail, December 23).

The answer is that I would not be starting from the place that he and his hell-bent Tory administration takes for granted. They are simply doing what Eric Pickles tells them to do. What we are seeing at the local level is what Cameron and his Cabinet want across the country, which to dismantle public services so that the private sector can pick up the lucrative bits to exploit. The rest of us can go hang.

I would start from an entirely different place.

The alternative to cutting services is raising income to meet the shortfall exacerbated by Pickles’ slash-and-burn of local services.

We live in one of the most affluent parts of England.

Why not take the Government at its word and work towards a localist approach within the Big Society?

Get the millionaires and major landowners in Oxfordshire to contribute a small proportion of their wealth to help save our elderly care, youth services and libraries?

Hold a referendum on that proposal, Mr Mitchell, and see what it reveals.

Nor would I keep telling distorted facts about national debt to support untenable policies and politics.

Until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the national debt was near the average for the period from 1985 to present. It rose after that because the last government injected vast sums to save the banks and stop global financial meltdown.

We need a national policy for economic growth, not mass unemployment and regressive service cuts.

ROY DARKE, Oxfordshire county councillor for Headington and Marston, Edgeway Road, Oxford