MADAM – Our MP says (SNJ, March 26) that the recent budget means ‘lower taxes for around 41,527 in Stroud’.
However, this will not help those who do not earn enough to pay tax.
As usual, this government is working on behalf of the better off, who will also pay less tax, and ignoring the poor.
In the same paper Neil Carmichael praises the fall in the numbers of those receiving job seekers’ allowance.
Some 327 fewer people are claiming this benefit compared with 2013.
I wonder how many of these 327 are in full-time work, with wages high enough to join the fortunate majority who earn enough to share in the privilege of paying tax.
For tax is not an evil from which we need the coalition government to free us, it is a privilege through which we pay for the really worthwhile things in life.
Tax enables us all to share in paying for the welfare of us all.
Our coalition government wants to destroy our precious welfare state in the name of tax cuts, and to give employers the freedom to exploit the rest of us with the offer of demeaning, meaningless jobs.
We need a society where all share with one another, and care for one another.
Tax is the way to do this: it is a symbol that we all belong.
Shame on a government which thinks it praiseworthy to exclude any from this great enterprise.
A living wage, and fair taxation is the way to a great society.
Who will join me in a Campaign for Real Tax?
Mary Brown
Stroud
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