to see the wallpaper! SIR: Oh what a tangled web they scheme, to climb the social latter, to be seen!

At £300 per roll of wallpaper, you'd expect it to sing Land of Hope and Glory for that price. Joking apart, the Lord Chancellor's reasons for such lavish wall decorations are acceptable, given that they will be gazed upon by fellow ladder climbers.

But this mans very manner and attitude, reeks of the self important upper class mentality, that decent men and women have had to endure for centuries in this land.

I have never been a member of any Union in my whole life but I can well imagine the kind of sufferance hard working folk must have put up with, in days gone by.

You would expect any Socialist government to strive against these attitudes of I'm holier than thou.. But the inexperienced Mr Blair it now appears, prefers to run with the hounds and make the poor foxes run like mad!

I did say in early 1997 that it would be a grave mistake to elect Blair into No. 10.

Methinks he would do well to remember the kind of folk who gave him his lofty place, and their trust, instead of trying to cling on to the ladder, Lord Irvine has surmounted.

It might even be the same ladder the Lord Chancellor uses to put up his £300 rolls of wallpaper!!

I have always believed that if only one person gives you their vote, they're doing so because they truly believe you can help them and they trust you to do so.

Isn't a shame that so often self importance becomes the one objective of most, if not all politicians and once that vote is lost, it is so often treated with such contempt!

Robert Anderson

Thaxted Place, Bolton.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.