NEW Labour is a long way from being the Labour Party which I voted for, but it is infinitely better than the Conservative Party which smugly pontificated for years as it feathered its own nest.

That repulsive man Jeffrey Archer sums up the kind of politician that people voted in during those awful Tory years.

Here is a man who has more money than you could spend in several lifetimes, still trying to lecture people on being virtuous, while at the same time involving himself in shady share dealings, being linked to a prostitute, and then getting someone to lie about his whereabouts.

With his spectacles resting on the end of his nose, he wags his finger at journalists like some smug grammar school headmaster putting people in their place.

And as a reward for all that he was made a Lord!

As for Archer's books, I don't know who reads them - and I can't be sure now who even writes them!

ANTHONY COHEN,

Pear Avenue,

Bury

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