MARK Harper MP and the ConDem coalition see cuts as the only answer to everything. Cut the NHS, cut pensions and – most galling of all – cut tax for the wealthiest.

A million pensioners have paid for the cuts in tax for millionaires.

Mr Harper recently argued that the cost of medicines has increased £600 million per year, but that's a drop in the ocean compared to the legal but immoral tax evasion loop-holes of the corporate world, rich and super-rich.

His Government is fixing the problem at the wrong end again, and blaming pretty much everything on the former government.

It is some encouragement then that a new generation of Labour have finally connected with whom they represent; ordinary working people. Labour has stated that it will repeal the awful?Health and Social Care Bill at the earliest opportunity.

But it will be too late for local hospitals. I hear that Jan?Stubbings (leader of the Glos NHS Primary Care Trust) has already received three expressions of interest for the tender to take over local community hospitals. All of them from the private sector. So when Harper says he wants the NHS to remain free at the point of delivery, I ask at what price?

We will do well to remember that it was Mark?Harper who hailed from the loud-speakers at the SOS Speech House rally when he was in opposition, vowing never to let the Dilke and other community hospitals fall into the hands of the private sector.

We will do well to remember that it was his government that tried to sell-off our forests.

We will do well to remember that it is his Conservative comrades who boast of a zero council tax rise, but then give us car parking charges, waste-collection charges and a frankly one-sided and failing cabinet system in our local council.

With the Lib Dems happy to stab the British people in the back at any turn, it is with rightful caution that some might need to reconsider the place of Labour. The party should heed the success of Respect's George Galloway and respond accordingly by remembering its roots, but also the legacy of New Labour and build some distance from it.

At every turn Harper cites what Labour did as his government's excuse for 'hard decisions.' Only by putting that distance between Blair's New Labour and the next generation of Labour will we have proper choice. And that choice rejects what this government is doing to our country – and more importantly – the majority of its people. That's right; the majority: remember us?

– Carl Spiby,?St Briavels.