Residents of Brighton and Hove who remember political events from recent years must be wondering just who they can trust with their vote in the forthcoming elections.

The Conservatives sold the nation's assets for the sake of short-term tax cuts, mainly for the rich. They privatised all and sundry, failed to invest the money in our long-term future and left us private monopolies that control our water supplies and the debacle of rail privatisation.

Nationally, they damaged our once proud NHS and educational system. Locally, they have done little positive and began a system that produces uncertainty for elderly people in their housing, pensions and community facilities, not to mention encouraging a deeply selfish society.

Labour seems to have made similar mistakes, keeping to Tory government spending plans for three years and being obsessed with keeping income tax very low even though there is a desperate need for investment in the NHS, education, transport, community care and other public services.

Labour has failed to support co-operatives and mutual societies and has often followed the Tory agenda, even to the point of part privatising air traffic control and the London Underground.

It also has contradictory approaches to civil liberties and the environment.

Labour has sold off many of the city's assets or mortgaged them so we all have to pay more council tax and has spent money on bureaucracy, cronyism and consultants.

Vast amounts are spent on public relations and press officers to make claims which sometimes seem spurious or merely reflect work done by other agencies or should be done by any vaguely efficient council anyway.

If only Labour had remembered the five great freedoms outlined by William Beveridge in the Forties - from want (poverty), ignorance (lack of training and education), disease (a better NHS), idleness (wasted talent) and squalor (poor or expensive housing and lack of choice) - we could all do much better.

I hope when the people of Brighton and Hove come to vote in the elections they will not feel powerless, apathetic and fed up.

There are other alternatives, such as the Liberal Democrats and Greens, candidates who may be more successful in creating opportunities for all, developing potential and helping to foster community.

-Rob Heale, Chatham Place, Brighton