Letter: Chance to end the culture of cover-ups

Sir: James Scott, while deploring racism, is quite happy to indulge in stereotyping (letter, 8 March). "Think," he writes, "of all those Labour voters in northern working men's clubs guffawing along with Bernard Manning."

For a start, Mr Scott, we don't guffaw up here, we laugh.

Secondly, any idea that working men's clubs are full of Labour voters is extremely simplistic. Would that it were true. Had it been, we wouldn't have had this motley crew of spivs and second-hand-car salesmen running the country for the last 18 years. Working men and women have traditionally been their own worst enemies and have voted Conservative as regularly and as blindly as the best-educated Buckinghamshire dweller, voting with their pockets and purses for the party that they imagined would fill them.

Ah well I'm off to oil the whippets and put some more tripe in me flat 'at before going off to t' club to hear some darkie jokes.

MIKE HARDING

Manchester

The writer is a stand-up comedian