Oh, how I agree with David Simmons (Letters, December 26) about the depressing tendency of Labour governments to tax us poor, hard-working souls in order for the money to be frittered away on such luxuries as better schools, improved hospitals and extra police on our streets.

I long for a return to the halcyon days of Conservative rule, when our taxes were used for such worthwhile things as privatising the railways and introducing much fairer ways of charging us - for instance, the poll tax.

The last Tory administration did a much better job of running the economy than prudent Gordon Brown, as we all remember from "Black Wednesday" and the ERM fiasco.

Yes, it's Labour's wasteful and overbearing bureaucracy that has meant better rights for part-time workers, a minimum wage, a guaranteed income for pensioners and fewer people on the dole than at any time in the past 35 years.

I would much rather my taxes were paying their unemployment benefit than going towards paying better wages for public-service workers such as myself.

You might call me selfish and decry my "survival of the fittest" ethos but I agree with Mr Simmons - my hard-earned cash is my own and everyone else can go hang.

-Tess Smith, Norton Road, Hove