I am writing to express my total outrage at Barnet Borough Council’s decision to decrease the amount of council tax support it gives to people. Making people pay 20 per cent rather than the current 8.5 per cent is an inhumane act. It was bad enough when they started making poor people and those on benefits pay the 8.5 per cent.

What was a joke was the ridiculous questionnaire they put up on their website, claiming to want to know people’s views; to term an old phrase, what a load of codswallop. They were offering three choices: keep it the same, a middle choice, or this diabolically high choice. It is completely obvious to me that their intention all along was to increase peoples bills, making it this 20 per cent.

People on benefits and those on low incomes are struggling enough already. This is another huge kick in the teeth for us. I simply cannot believe how little empathy this council has for poor people; in fact, they obviously have none whatsoever.

We are supposed to be one of the richer boroughs of London. Yet, this council continues to make the poor poorer.

I was not aware of the petition by the Z2K charity, otherwise I would have signed it in an instant. I expressed my outrage in the so-called online opinion questionnaire by Barnet Borough Council, obviously to no avail and a total waste of money as they knew what their intention was all along. Do they think the people of Barnet are imbeciles? The way things are going, it won’t be long before I’m at the foodbanks, along with thousands more in this borough. I am disgusted at the pure evil of the decision-makers in this process and I hope that one day they will discover what it’s like to be poor.

Laura Ann Fiscus

Simmons Way, Whetstone