I hope that the anonymous person who castigated us Boltonians for our ignorance, ill manners, tattoos, socialism, etc, is better at checking job applications than at pronouncing on current affairs.

If not, his millionaire boss is in for trouble.

For the information of the anonymous writer, here are some facts that he might care to mull over when back in sunny Portugal.

First, it would be silly for Boltonians to blame the current mess on Maggie Thatcher because, during the Thatcher and Major years, we regularly returned two Conservative MPs to one Labour MP.

Bolton is not a socialist town.

Our council is split fairly evenly between the three main parties. When the writer called us “North-west socialists”, he was addressing, at most, one-third of us while insulting us all.

Second, illiteracy and innumeracy are certainly problems — but not just in the North-west.

In my opinion, they were largely caused by the adoption of fashionable educational ideas in the 1960s. To the best of my knowledge, none of these ideas stemmed from the North-west.

If anything, they were formulated in teacher training establishments in the South-east, and subsequently spread through the country like foot and mouth disease.

The pernicious trendies who came up with these ideas may have been socialists, and they may even have been tattooed, but Boltonians can hardly be blamed for that.

Third, the writer also said that “elderly Brits have a lot to answer for”. Which ones?

The ones who fought in the Second World War and then introduced the welfare state in the 1940s?

If he were to study his history, he might find they had good reasons for doing what they did. They certainly made mistakes but they tried their best. All countries go through unfortunate periods in their history.

The writer’s Portuguese paradise was, until quite recently, a pseudo-fascist dictatorship ruled by Dr Salazar and secret police originally trained by the Gestapo. Do “elderly Ports” have a lot to answer for, too?

Fourth, the writer did not like tattoos and body-piercing. Neither do I. But, if he looks closely, I think he will find that such adornments are not exclusive to the North-west or the UK — or even to socialists.

Fifth, he said we are ill mannered. Well, there are all sorts of ways to be rude. One of the worst ways is to insult a quarter of a million people with silly, sneering, generalised abuse, and then hide behind anonymity.

The tone of the letter indicates to me that the writer is not a very nice person, but I would not go on to say that all ex-pats living on the Algarve are cowardly creeps.

Finally, we all like a good moan and, God knows, there’s enough wrong with the country. But I’d be more inclined to listen to the anonymous writer’s farrago of intemperate and half-baked bilge if he wasn’t so obviously proud of the fact that he’s now an expatriate. None of Britain’s problems can be solved by legging it to the Iberian Peninsula. Once a rat — even an anonymous one — has deserted a sinking ship, it should stay away — especially if the ship doesn’t sink .

Simon Topliss, Kylemore Place, Farnworth