I FEEL I must address the ridiculous rantings of Mike Bell ("Equal treatment", Letters, October 1).

He claims to oppose discrimination of the disabled, older people, widows and widowers, army veterans and war heroes.

But the very fact that he has singled out all these people for a mention in connection with law breaking means he has in effect discriminated against the most honest and vulnerable in society.

Those he mentions are the people for whom the council tax has become a real issue of affordability. They are also the ones who, above all, have earned their dues and have the right to protest in any way they feel will get the message over to an unsympathetic Government.

Council tax protesters Albert Ridley and Sylvia Hardy did not, in fact, refuse to pay their council tax, they only withheld the excessive and grossly unfair rises which increase year upon year while pensions remain almost static.

If Mike Bell thinks these two hardened criminal pensioners and the other people he has mentioned, ie war heroes etc, deserve prison sentences just what are his thoughts on all the real hardened lawbreakers who are consistently going unpunished by this farce of a justice system we have today?

A case in point is the one reported in the Evening Press the very same night that Mike Bell's letter appeared, "Van Pair in £10k fraud" - no recompense ordered by the judge, one of many such cases.

It seems in Tony Blair's Britain, crime really does pay, for it is far better to steal thousands of pounds and get off scot free than withhold £62 increase in council tax.

Mrs W P Carter,

Marston Crescent,

Acomb,

York.

Updated: 09:20 Wednesday, October 05, 2005