"Poll and Council Taxes are regressive and inequitable. Local taxes should be collected by a local income tax. The more you have, the more you pay."

This would work provided the politicians of every side had the balls to actually make their rich supporters pay - this is the real fly in the ointment.

During the campaign of civil disobedience I and several people I know refused to pay the poll tax. I had hours of fun arguing and hassling the local council's financial department as I avoided being sent to court (successfully as it turned out).

However, one of the lads I knew who was a student with a part-time job had been told he had to pay (even though he should have been exempt) was sent to court and had decided to defend himself. He wrote an excellent statment to read out in court, swotted up on the procedures to make sure he was able to speak to the court and off he went. When we saw him in the pub later, he was crestfallen. He had been told, contrary to law he wouldn't be given his allotted time to speak and his case was essentially decided before he even set foot in the courthouse. We all knew we'd have to pay - the proles always do - but at least we thought we could make our point peacefully before the powers that be.

Interestingly enough, I knew the JP who tried this chap - he worked for a large company nearby and he was a client of the firm where I worked, a well-off businessman. I'd had business dealings with him and asked him about the case - why weren't the courts hearing the cases fairly? is't this a travesty of justice if a citizen couldn't defend himself in a court of law? His reply was that he couldn't give a shit about anyone who came in front of him in a poll tax case, he couldn't care less about their rights in the courthouse and if they came before him they would be convicted regardless. I later discovered the same JP was also producing hard-core pornography locally - hiring the models, going to the shoots, getting the printing done - the works.

Sordid little people, enforcing the vicious policies of politicians who held a large proportion of the people in this country in utter contempt simply because they didn't have enough money - this is the truth of the poll tax, and the best thing to come out of the whole sorry mess was the riots, which certainly put a rocket up the arse of Thatcher and her cronies.