AS a visitor to Blackburn, reading your Wednesday edition (LET, April 14), I was most surprised at the tone of John Blunt's attack on William Hague.

I wonder if the person writing such a vitriolic piece has ever met William face-to-face.

On my return home, I saw on TV an item by a well-known left-wing personality who visited William Hague's old school at Wath on Dearne, Yorkshire, and interviewed the head teacher. He had been his teacher when William first spoke at the Conservative Party conference.

It was clear from this interview that William Hague is not the person John Blunt makes him out to be, but very much "a man of the people."

It is surely not necessary to attack anyone in such a way from a respected Lancashire newspaper - or do you just hate Yorkshire Tykes so much?

Of course, I accept that John Prescott was also taken to task in the adjoining column - but not in such derogatory personal terms as those used to describe William Hague.

MARK ANDREW, Manor Heath Road, Halifax.

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