I READ in the letters on August 20 that my dig at the pay rise for MPs still rankles in people’s noses.

A gentleman called Paul O'Neil appeared to have the idea that I am intending to go into politics – nothing could be further from my mind.

After all I am an honest man and probably wouldn’t fit in. He reiterates the facts that Dorothy Fudge already made clear in her letter on the same subject.

He now informs me that the Labour party had a link to this business.

How interesting to know that all the MPs he mentioned were guzzling in the same trough.

He sounds like a typical politician, they do give a straight yes or no, but give you what I call an oblique answer and divert your attention to the bank rate or the railway rolling stock... Anything but answer the question.

So I am to believe that the increase mentioned in all the leading papers did not exist and the MPs did not get thirty grand increase while the rest of us only had one per cent.

This is why I am not going into the political scene, I wouldn’t fit in – I have a conscience.

Alan Blandford, Southampton