ISUGGEST Labour Party HQ advises its canvassers to be honest about the number of so-called 'asylum seekers' pouring into Britain instead of telling them - as I was by two Labour canvassers - that asylum seekers into Britain were 'a mere trickle' and 'nothing to be concerned about.'

The truth is that, from August this year, there are approximately 80,000 applications for asylum still outstanding and waiting to be processed. This does not include the numbers already processed from January 1 to the end of July, which brings the total of would-be 'asylum seekers' this year alone to well over 100,000.

If this is what Labour calls 'a trickle,' the mind boggles at what they would call a flood.

Also, what are Algerian 'refugees' doing in Britain when their place is in France? Tony Blair's canvassers did not have a clue; nor, I suspect, does anyone else, the Tories included.

If we had fewer refugees' and bleeding hearts like Cardinal Hume, who would declare Britain open house to anyone in the world who wanted to come here, we might be able to afford to pay our pensioners a decent pension instead of the pittance they have to exist on after paying taxes all their working lives.

SYLVIA NOBLE (Mrs), Albert Road, Colne.

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