Sir, – Two of your stories (D&S Times, Mar 13) about North Yorkshire County Council proposals – to increase the cost of bus passes for school students, and to cut funding for libraries – raise the same issue.

You quote John Blackie describing the bus pass price rise as a tax on living in the countryside. It is also a tax on education. Libraries are one of the services that make us a civilised country. They open a door to information, wisdom, and self-development that the county wants to shut.

As county representatives say, they are constrained by massive cuts imposed on them by central government – no doubt in the name of "balancing the books". But it doesn’t have to be like this. The government could balance the books by taxing wealth, closing tax loopholes, and collecting all the tax that’s due from big business and the one per cent.

With a general election approaching, anyone who voted Conservative in 2010 might reflect on these attacks on education and libraries – along with the demonisation of welfare recipients and the creeping privatisation of the NHS – that whatever they thought they were voting for, this is what they got. If they vote Conservative in May, they will get more savage assaults on public services until there is nothing left to cut.

DAVE DALTON

Station Road, Richmond.