SIR – Bob Watson of Baildon is right to be concerned that Bradford Council gets best value from his council tax (Letters, January 31), but there has to be a balance struck between the cheapest option and supporting jobs for our own people.
If it’s only about saving money, a million more public sector jobs in local authorities and the civil service could be eliminated by outsourcing their clerical work overseas – easily achievable with state-of-the-art IT and satellite communications such as council tax bills from Mumbai or Chennai.
But too much work has already been lost here due to ‘globalisation’, like in 1997 when I got a call to collect a tonne of cloth from Thann in France, near the Swiss border, for a clothing factory in Barnsley which made garments for well-known high street stores.
That factory and others in the same group have all now closed with hundreds of jobs lost, but the same garments are made in China for the same shops, but cheaper.
What matters is best value – not the lowest price.
D S Boyes, Rodley Lane, Leeds
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