I WAS amused with Steve Jones’s rebuttal of Cllr Nick Peel’s remarks about the so called (and incidentally I must stress, the incorrectly labelled) “bedroom tax,” protesters,’ as being extreme left wing.

“Its’ time for new thinking” (December 7) Mr Jones claims that he is not on the ‘far left’ and goes onto detach himself from, Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin, whom he described as being “from the hard left traditions.” But I nonetheless note with some curiosity his failure to also distance himself from Friedrick Engels and Carl Marx, co-authors of the Communist manifesto.

Whatever are the rights and wrongs of this coalition government’s policy of reducing certain housing benefits/subsidies whatever you want to call them, it is most definitely not a tax. A tax is something that generally wealth creators are forced to pay. A tax is a charge on a company’s or person’s physically earned income or property. It is a ‘heavy burden placed upon peoples, a system whereby charges are levied by government on earnings and/or purchases. It is a form of coercion. The reduction in housing/accommodation subsidies paid by the government to some people is not a tax and therefore can in no way be described as one, it is a benefit cut pure and simple, and there is a fundamental difference

But however, I do feel compelled to agree with Steve Jones regarding the statement he also made within his letter that, “It's time to start looking at some new thinking where people's wellbeing is put before the protections of the profits of a few private individuals.”

Amen to that Mr Jones. Like you I would also like to see a situation where the rights of the individual are paramount to those of the state where the liberty and freedoms, the right of individuals to legally pursue happiness and to freely acquire intellectual, and/or physical property such as money/possessions, and to also exercise full control over their use. Along with the right of course of being able to live one’s own life as one sees fit, should be sacrosanct. The only proviso of course, and I’m sure Mr Jones will agree with me here, is that individuals or organisations, whoever they are do not impinge on the rights other law abiding people’s to do the likewise.

Stuart A Chapman

Isel of Wight