MY favourite guru once said: "The art of leadership is to take people with you".

Taking a completely objective view of the financing of local government services, the submission that those who use local government services should be required to contribute towards their costs is extremely difficult to refute.

Especially when considering a household of six high-earning adults, when their council tax is the same as the two pensioners living on a diminishing "fixed income" next door.

Which was why Margaret Thatcher introduced the Community Charge, dubbed by the left as the "poll tax".

One of the advantages of being a Liberal Democrat is that you can be all things to all men and women in the certain knowledge that the possibility of attaining power and responsibility is remote. Hence their regular forages in the media with crackpot policies.

Thinking and experienced people will appreciate that the logistics of collecting a so-called local income tax, with all the inherent dangers, not least of confidentiality, simply beggars belief.

True to form, the Lib Dems touted their latest buffoonery at a county council meeting when an amendment to their motion was carried by a huge majority. That Worcestershire County Council supports the Local Government Association in its research into ways and means of raising local revenue, in simple terms.

That those who use local government services should contribute towards their costs still seems perfectly reasonable to me but for various reasons at the time, we could not "take the people with us".

County Councillor TOM WAREING

Jays Close

Winyates Green