Many Labour councils have been wanting to raise Council Tax for years, in order to provide them with the money to fund decent services in their areas. What's been preventing them from doing so is the cap imposed by central government. So it seems odd that Gulliver should see a partial lifting of that cap as 'nasty'.
Perhaps Gulliver would care to explain how either central or local government is expected to fund health services, social services, education, etc, without taking the money in taxes from its citizens?
We need to accept that, if we want decent services, we'll have to pay for them. I'll vote for any party that pledges to initially put Income Tax up to 22% (with increased thresholds, so that the poorest families aren't hit) and promises to raise it by a further 1% for each of the next three years (thus reaching 25% eventually). That would still mean that we'd be paying less tax in total than those countries with decent childcare/social care/health care, etc (such as the Scandinavian countries) but we'd be able to make a start on improving failing systems (and possibly even beginning to reduce the country's massive debt burden too).