Letter - We seem to suffer more cuts than others

At a recent local joint committee meeting we were told our fire service had to make cuts totalling 38 per cent.

This is much worse than many other areas and is in spite of a recent audit concluding we had the second most cost-effective unit in the country.

Two years ago Shropshire was the fifth worst-funded local education authority in the UK and our MP was on radio promising to increase our per-pupil funding.

Today we are still poorly funded and many of our schools look likely to be cut.

I appreciate cuts must be made to reduce the deficit but why are we worse off than other areas in the UK?

Perhaps our unitary council is not lobbying our MPs effectively? Perhaps our MPs are not effective at "batting" for us in these debates? Either way, the result is unacceptable.

I wonder if our MPs are a little too comfortable?

We should hold on to this thought when we get the chance to vote in the referendum in May this year.

A change to AV+1 would maybe focus their minds on the electors. We should remember in the unitary council area only half of the electors voted for a Conservative MP, but we got 100 per cent Conservative members.

The other half of the electorate was ignored. Does this sound fair?

Colin Case, Shrewsbury