Sir.-I write in response to a recent letter from Cllr Alison Wall.

The Liberal Democrats' proposal to abolish council tax and replace it with a system of local income tax is surely a gimmick, pulled together by the Lib-Dems as a means to jump on a populist bandwagon by making claims to save money.

The residents of Basingstoke are no fools and can see that this Lib-Dem proposal is nothing but another council poll tax in the making.

The Lib-Dems are a third party and will never be in power to implement any changes in the council tax system, so what is the point of making proposals that they cannot fulfil?

In my letter to The Gazette on December 19, I laid out in detail what the Lib-Dems have in mind. They want a top rate of income tax of 50 per cent and a regional tax of three per cent to fund regional assemblies as passed at the Lib-Dems conference on March 11, 2002.

So come on, Cllr Wall, stop trying to mislead the electorate. One can fool the people most of the time, but not all the time.

-Ronald B Collins, Eastrop Conservatives.