I found the letter you printed last week from A Thurman and Hodge quite astonishing.

Are these people saying their only aim in standing for election to Lewisham Council was to rattle the Labour party and never mind about the community they were supposed to be serving? If this is the case, they have clearly wasted their £100 and one can only be grateful they did so badly in the polls.

I have no idea whether Thurman and Hodge are correct in stating Martin James is a Labour Party stooge, or whether this is a complete invention to make themselves sound less irrelevant.

Speaking as someone who has nothing to do with any of the local political parties, I have to agree with both the points made by Mr Martin: first, that the overwhelming majority of those who voted in the recent elections rejected the ideas put forward in the Hither Green Partnership's manifesto; and secondly, that food shopping facilities actually in Hither Green are far from satisfactory.

At present, local residents looking for good value, good quality food have to make a car journey to get it.

This cannot be good for Hither Green on social, economic or environmental grounds.

Dennis Fearon

Lewisham

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.