I WAS very glad to read in Stroud Town Council’s newsletter About Town that they are to increase their council tax precept by 24p per week.

I hope the rest of the council tax will also rise.

I wish that income tax (a much fairer tax than council tax, linked more to the ability to pay) would rise substantially – perhaps not to the levels that gave us the welfare state.

We need a Campaign for Real Tax to change our perception of taxation.

Tax is not an unjust fine levied by an evil force called government it is, rather, a symbol of the fact that we really are all in this together.

Taxation provides us with the valuable things in life health, education, security in old age, libraries, parks – the things that make life worth living.

While it is true that governments can, and do, waste tax revenues on such things as weapons of mass destruction, yet survey after survey shows that people are willing to pay more tax for the NHS.

As old people die on trolleys waiting for emergency beds in hospitals, as young people turn increasingly to gangs and violent crime, as they see a future with no hope, as disabled people are forced out of jobs that may give meaning to their lives when their mobility payments are withdrawn, perhaps the rest of us need to be that convinced that we all depend on one another.

We can only prosper with one another.

There is an alternative to austerity - it is called tax.

Mary Brown

Stroud