AS the saying goes, there are two certainties in life, death and taxes; and some people spend their life trying to avoid both. In his conference speech, David Cameron reminded us of the old 98 per cent tax band for the ‘Super Earners’ in the 1960’s.

His comment took me back to a tea break in a Wallsend shipyard, about 1960’ish. A group of apprentices sat in the workshop with tea and sandwiches. One apprentice Tom, whose dad was an oil company executive, said his dad paid 19s/6d in the pound tax (in today’s money 97.25p/100p = 98 per cent). Tom thought this unfair. In the discussion which followed, I said: “I wish my dad paid 98 per cent tax!”; only a few weeks before my dad had been a face worker in a coal mine, but now lay in an NHS hospital following a serious accident. Tom accused me of not being truthful (or words to that effect). I replied saying if my dad paid 98 per cent tax, then I would live in a large house near Ponteland, and I would have attended a private school with 12 in a class, and my dad wouldn’t be in hospital; the majority present agreed with my comments.

Today, I am happy to pay my share of the UK tax burden from my income because from that taxation I live in the best society in the world, the UK. Of course, it could be better, but, with a change of political direction it could go back to the stop/go policies of the Black Wednesday club.

The Tory slogan this year was ‘Ready for Change’. We all have to ask, what’s changed? The Tories, their policies, or their values? I think not! However the polls show that people are considering voting for Cameron this time for a change; some buy into the ‘Ready for Change’ slogan. Before they do, I think they must ask themselves, have the Tories really changed? Would Cameron, in No 10, really remember George’s comment “We are all in this together”? Did George mean you and your family?

Would they share the burden proportionally across the nation? Would he go for a 98 per cent tax rate for greedy bankers? Would he look after Swindon’s working families, the old and the poor in Swindon? Would he look after you? Or, would he follow Tory history, and look after his friends, the well off, with their ‘trickle down’ economics for the rest of us. I look at history for my answer, and I remember a quote from a Tory in the 1980’s and 90’s, “If it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working!” And we here in Swindon know who it was hurting, not those at the top, but Swindon’s working families, the old, the young, the unemployed, the poor, it may even have been you.

MIKE SPRY Mayfield Close Nythe Swindon