Don’t be fooled: people in smart streets struggle too

Published: 12 November, 2010

• I FEAR that Richard Wilkinson’s (The Spirit Level) idea that the better-off residents of Islington can be persuaded to cough up more council tax than they already do is about as well founded as the theory behind his book (Ease the cuts pain... let the rich pay more, November 5). 

Just because the housing in Islington is valuable does not mean to say that the people living here are wealthy. I live in a Georgian terrace in Clerkenwell where the houses are worth over a million pounds. However, half the residents are council tenants who by virtue of living in social housing are not millionaires, I hope. 

Of the others, a good few are pensioners, like myself, or on low-to-average incomes. Those who earn good salaries are struggling to pay huge mortgages.

I expect this pattern is replicated throughout the borough. It seems to have been missed that 50 per cent of the housing in Islington is owned by the council, and that many who own their homes moved into the borough when it was not expensive to live here.  

Those who have moved in more recently will undoubtedly have paid a lot of money and will have big debts and not a lot of spare cash. 

There will, of course, be some very wealthy people living here, but not enough, I suspect, to plug any funding gaps, even if they could be persuaded to do so.  

I’m afraid that Catherine West and the other councillors will just have to grasp the nettle and prioritise spending, and hope that their decisions don’t annoy the electorate too much.

DARIAN MITCHELL
Lloyd Baker Street, WC1

• I HAD hoped for better from the last meeting of the Islington Fairness Commission. Not a word on the many innovations by local authorities all over the country to improve efficiency without damaging frontline services. 

Not a word on Gordon Brown’s toxic legacy of gross overspending, which has landed the new government with so many difficult decisions, causing fear for so many people.

Instead all we hear is the old “soak the rich” mantra. Never mind that those people who live in the largest houses already pay the most council tax, regardless of their actual income. 

Those people who have the largest incomes already pay the most tax at the highest rates, and in addition their higher leisure spending also creates VAT revenue for the state, and generates economic activity.

The best way to a fairer society is by enhancing individual liberty and economic freedom, as it is those societies which are the most free and prosperous which have the highest charitable giving. 

They also have the best provision for their least advantaged members

CHRIS WILLIAMS
Calabria Road, N5