WITH regard to your story about Hambleton District Council’s £757,000 in redundancy pay-offs to three of its officers (D&S Times, Dec 30), I live in a Band D property, and my council tax is £1,500-a-year.

It will therefore take 505 years for me to cover the total hand-out, and a mere 233 years to pay off the £349,910 that went to one officer alone.

Oh, and let us not forget if the three are retiring, they will not worry about getting by because their pensions will be more than double a lot of people’s annual wages.

T Rhodes, Bedale

CAN there be a bookworm or a birdwatcher in the region who has not been moved to tears by the penury endured by three officials of Hambleton District Council who trousered more than £750,000 of public money that was given to them by Hambleton’s elected representatives (D&S Times, Dec 30)?

One hopes not, for it is now clear that with such a hole left in the council’s coffers, action will have to be taken to fill it. And what better targets than the district’s volunteer-run libraries and the nature reserve which recently received a demand for an eye-watering amount of council tax.

So to those two groups who have been complaining, I say stop, cough up and strike the words “borough” and “rotten” from your lips.

Richard Wells, East Witton