OVER the years, we have become accustomed to Nigel Evans' prolific publicity machine.

Thus, Bill Jacobs reports (LET, June 18) the Ribble Valley Tory MP is about to accuse the government of "dragging its feet" over the millennium bug; then, the next day, his claim that "The country is facing a crisis of epidemic proportions. This electronic plague will affect us all".

Theresa Robson then tells us (LET, June 22) that Mr Evans has criticised the government's response to the electronic plague as "pathetic." Ministers should "pull their finger out," he demands.

It's all one and the same story. But, fair enough, Tory MPs have to make up in noise these days for the lack in their numbers and anyway, this young man's spouting on every subject under the sun merits amused indifference.

But now he has hit a raw nerve. He brands as heartless the MPs who have wrecked a bill to include windchill in cold weather payments to pensioners (LET, July 7, with, of course, a trailer the previous day). He said: "They must be without any feeling or compassion towards the most vulnerable people in society... The whole measure would have cost £8 million."

Surprise, surprise! - the previous Tory government, of which he was a member, also blocked a similar measure.

Mr Evans engages in base and cynical political point-scoring.

After the battering of 18 Tory years there are some three million pensioners who need extra support just for a bare existence.

It is sickening hypocrisy for him to profess pious concern for them.

Never mind £8 million - the Tory fraud of up-rating pensions with prices instead of earnings is now cheating pensioners of £8 billion a year!

G E RAYNER, Whinney Lane, Langho, Blackburn.

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