Letter: Yes, tax and spend

Letter:

Yes, tax and spend

Sir: Your editorial praising Tony Blair for rubbishing allegedly Old Left policies of higher state spending and higher taxes is astonishing (21 June).

Not a day goes by without a whine somewhere in The Independent about the dreadful state of Britain. According to you, we are the cancer and teenage pregnancy capital of Europe, and our education, health and social services are approaching dereliction. You expostulate on the yawning gulf between rich and poor and the state of our transport and inner cities. I turn the page from your leading article and find your former editor, Andreas Whittam Smith, insisting on the Comment page that UK aid to Third World countries should be more than doubled.

Does it not strike you that remedying this great index of ills will cost money?

JOSIE EDWARDS

London N10