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

The submission that each user of local government services should contribute to the costs of such services is difficult to refute.

This was the principle of Margaret Thatcher's Community Charge, a thoroughly moral means of raising revenue at local level, that the spin doctors of the fascist Left dubbed "Poll Tax".

That a family of six high-earning adults, living next door to a couple of old-aged pensioners on a diminishing fixed income, should pay the same in council tax cannot be justified.

The logistics of a Local Income Tax defy credibility, not least the means of ensuring confidentiality, among other obvious difficulties. Yet our local enthusiasts, true to form in a blaze of Press publicity, put down a motion at last week's county council meeting.

Happily, a common-sense amendment referring the issue of locally-raised tax revenue to the Local Government Association's current research, was carried by an overwhelming vote.

Clearly, that each adult user of local government services, should contribute towards the costs of such services is perfectly moral - but for a number of reasons at that time, Margaret Thatcher's government was unable "to take people with them"!

County Councillor TOM WAREING, Redditch, Worcestershire.