Council tax must go

Michael Howard announced today that if elected, the Conservatives would introduce discounts on Council Tax for pensioners.
Talk about second-hand and second-rate initiatives.
The Lib-Dems have been advocating the aboliton of Council Tax for ages (pdf file - see page 5). The Lib-Dems would replace the Council tax with a local income tax, so pensioners would automatically pay much less. So would the low-paid. Middle income earners would pay more, but it would be a far more equitable system than one based on arbitrary, and out of date property valuations. I would pay a bit more, now when I am working, but I would pay a lot less when I retire (or if I became unemployed).
A local income tax would also force central government to allocate resources more fairly to the councils that needed them most- the councils where low-income families live. Part of New Labour's spin has been to allocate local government support with more reference to politics than to need. While they have introduced legislation forcing councils to provide new services, they have not provided funding. (An example was the increase in teacher's pensions that local councils had to pay, but for which no increased grant was allocated.) This has allowed Blair and Co. to criticise Conservative and Lib-Dem local councils that have been forced to raise council tax, when in fact the tax was being raised to fund a central government - that is, a New Labour - policy.