I WAS in Wharfedale recently when the river was in spate. The Burnsall stepping-stones were awash and slippery and I pivoted along to keep vertical until I turned back at too big a gap, used the bridge, and survived.

Our supine Parliament has now let Tony Blair survive after hopping from the wobbly stone labelled "Legality -- Resolution 1441, 1st Golf War" to the one marked "WMD, 45 minutes," and when that one sank, to the present one marked "Nasty Mr Saddam," Barbara Castle would have exploded!

The dossier of September 2002 was published under the "sexed-up" title "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," with the Prime Minister using the phrase "current and serious threat." Now, instead of apologising for being misled, he hops to the claim that Saddam's removal is beneficial overall.

This, following the murder by bombing of tens of thousands of ordinary Iraqis, is "too big a gap," for the UK and the usurped US governments have subverted the United Nations which is the one hope in this world for peace and freedom.

Since Parliament has failed to demote the MP and Head of Security, the task falls to Britain's voters, who need to call on their local political parties to promote candidates who will demand a change in leadership of the big parties as a condition of their support. In the case of the Labour Party, to which I have belonged for 57 years, such a change of leader would most likely trawl back hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or two, of alienated votes.

FRANK McMANUS, Longfield Road, Todmorden.