I LISTENED to the speeches at the Conservative Party Conference and the only proposal that I thought had virtue was to impose a levy on people who live in this country and avoid taxation.

It is truly amazing that we have had a Labour Government for ten years and the rich not only get big pay rises, but they also pay no taxation. At the same time ordinary working people on meagre incomes are not going to get increases in pay at the same level as inflation, but also have to pay tax avoided by the super rich.

The comedy of the Conservatives is that the beneficiaries of the levy on some of the rich is to increase the threshold for inheritance tax.

I am sure nobody in my acquaintance will benefit from such a transfer of funds.

The Conservatives want to get people off disability allowances and ignore the fact that many who do not work as a result of disability are idle through industrial accidents.

The Labour Government has been a great disappointment to those who have campaigned for Labour all their lives, but we saw at the Conservative Conference the same sort of people I have opposed all my life, who do not have an ounce of sympathy for those at the bottom of the pile.

Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.