Devon scream : LETTER

After the justified response to Charles Jennings's book Up North: Travels Beyond the Watford Gap (Letters, 4 February), could we now look at Off West: Travels Beyond the Home Counties - the bit that doesn't seem to exist according to Westminster, the bit that carries on for 130 miles beyond Bristol.

If anywhere has been short-changed and almost completely ruined by lack of funding, it is Devon and Cornwall. When the (now fewer and fewer) holiday- makers leave at the end of the summer, the area dies. Industries, dockyards, fisheries and even the armed services are being denigrated to extinction.

Meanwhile, the average West Country man has never earned enough to enable him to overcome such setbacks as we are now experiencing.

e burnett

Plymouth, Devon