KATHY Gee (July 12) is the one who should be "bothered" to read the article properly.

In her letter she writes that I asked (July 6) how Gareth Tidman could compare Margaret Thatcher and Cllr Barbara Ronson in a personal profile he wrote on the latter.

I actually asked how he, "could even begin to compare". Look at the totality of what is written Kathy - he did begin to compare.

Neither was I "bitter" to "rant" about the personal profile on Cllr Ronson.

As a citizen, not a "would-be politician", I would rather read about what the new leader of the council and her party are going to do while in power. I am sure most people in the borough would.

In addition to this, Kathy Gee "fails to recognise" that one cannot agree or disagree on hard facts. Bolton's Labour Council was rated "excellent" - fact. The reason for Labour's poor showing at the local elections is events in Baghdad, not Bolton. Kathy Gee is therefore naive to think that, just because it was a local election, people solely voted on local issues.

She asks, "Why not listen to the voters?" Labour has always listened and will continue to do so. The party did a survey on 70,000 households, borough-wide, asking people what their top priorities for local government were. Feedback was received and acted upon.

In my letter, I never wrote that Labour did nothing wrong. We always recognised, although Labour ran an "excellent" authority, the fact that there was room for improvement. That is why we listened - to find out what the people wanted us to do.

We in the Labour Party can be proud of our record in local government.

After years of heaping irresponsible criticism on the Labour administration, the Lib dems must be asking themselves, "What do we do now"?

The answer is, they have no idea.

A month since they came to power and no mention in the press about their plans for the running of Bolton Council. That really says it all about the Liberal Democrats.

Sean Harkin

Wade Bank

Westhoughton