George Osborne has given us smoke and mirrors | Letters

There are three things to say about the UK's spending review. First of all it shows that this government is susceptible to pressure in reversing the tax credit and police cuts, and secondly, despite the inadequate BBC scrutiny and analysis, this was about consolidating austerity. Tax credit and police cut reversal was not new money. It was just not a cut. Meanwhile we are on course for public spending to be 36% of GDP, which means that public funding will kept at the cut level it is now. This is not enough for social care, libraries, children's centres, housing benefit, youth clubs, fire services, policing, employment support allowance and social housing. Finally the OBR is forecasting five years of continuous growth, which means at the very least that the economy is stabilising. So we have a choice to fund the public services we need, and that is the alternative.
Barry Kushner
Liverpool

" The handy table of public spending "growth" (mostly cuts) highlighted on the Treasury website misses out local government due to an obscure accounting convention. You have to wade through to page 100 of the spending review document to find that central government support for councils is to be more than halved - cut by 56%. This is on top of the 28% cut we have already seen. George Osborne assumes that most of this can be made up by higher local taxes on business, residents and land sales. All very well if you live in a rich area with buoyant business and well-heeled taxpayers, but a disaster if you have neither. The net effect is yet again to protect the affluent south and south-east and visit the harshest cuts on the north, Midlands and west.
Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby
University of Kent