As luck would have it, the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham coincided with the biggest fall on the Stock Market in living memory, leaving the Shadow Chancellor a whiter shade of pale.
This resulted in some hasty rewriting of planned speeches and the subject of reintroducing weekly rubbish collections was binned in favour of the big freeze on council tax.
The Tory proposal to freeze council tax was not only entirely inconsistent with the costly reintroduction of weekly refuse collections, but a shameless act of plagiarism. George Osbourne unashamedly borrowed the entire concept from Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, who struck a deal with 32 councils to freeze council tax.
It is probably fair to say that originality is not the Shadow Chancellor's forte.
Last year's pledge on inheritance tax was lifted straight from the pages of a long-running Daily Mail campaign!
SUSAN THOMAS Magdalen Street Oxford
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