Sir, - I read with interest your comprehensive full page spread in last week's D&S Times about the Tory candidate for the Richmond constituency.

Whilst I marvelled at his expensive Winchester College education, his experience of large investment companies and his work in Silicon Valley, I was left with the following nagging doubts: Don't we already have enough MPs with these credentials?

Don't we have enough multi-millionaires in Parliament, some of whom clearly see becoming an MP as just a stepping stone to further their contacts and increase their wealth and status?

Don't we have enough parliamentarians with absolutely no comprehension of struggling to pay the rent or mortgage, of living in a rural area where cancer treatment can mean a hundred mile trip, or of having to sell the family home to pay for elderly residential care?

And don't we have enough politicians already with no understanding of the difficulties of finding a house in an area where the cheapest ones cost eight times the average? Yes we do.

I therefore couldn't help thinking what we need is someone rather more ordinary to represent us. Someone who's lived and worked for years here, sent their children to local schools here, been treated by the NHS here, and most of all has appeared in your pages week in and week out for over 20 years sticking up for all of us here.

That man, of course, isn't Mr Sunak, it's John Blackie.

HJ MILLAR

Stapleton.