WITH all the talk about taxes in the General Election run-up, Stephen Burton misses the greatest "stealth tax" of all time (Letters, April 12).

When I was a kid, I remember VAT being around seven or eight per cent. Mrs Thatcher's government put this up to a whopping 17.5 per cent, as well as increasing the range of goods to which VAT was added. The worst of these has to be women's sanitary products, which stopped being a "necessity" and became a "luxury". It was not stealthy, more a punch in the face.

A Tessier,

Rose Street, York.

Updated: 10:08 Friday, April 15, 2005