SIR: Your thoughtful leading article in respect of Mr Thurnham's departure to pastures new had much to commend it.

When he announced that he was retiring at the next Election the disclosure came as no great surprise.

Many of us who take an active interest in these matters were more than surprised when we subsequently learned that Peter Thurnham's retirement from public life had taken him no further than Westmorland and Lonsdale and an application to represent that not-so-difficult seat.

We now understand that he was not granted even an interview.

But what else did he expect? There are people of calculating minds in politics and some in Westmorland who may have felt it nobler in the mind to have gone down with every gun blazing in Bolton rather than going up with every gun blazing on the grouse moors.

Would Mr Thurnham have defected to the Liberal Democrats had he been offered the seat in Westmorland and Lonsdale?

He wrote: "The renewed allegations of misconduct by Conservative Members of Parliament in the run-up to the Party Conference confirm that rottenness is deep-rooted in the party".

Will Mr Thurnham tell us by which process of English law an 'allegation' is confirmation of anything?

No apology to the people who worked devotedly to secure his return to Parliament; no regrets to the 21,644 people who voted Conservative under the impression that that was what they were getting as their representative to Parliament.

A P Osborne, Tonge Moor Road, Bolton

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