I SEE that the pantomime season has started early this year. I refer to this week's television coverage of the choreographed Labour Party Conference: or should I say the New Labour Rally?

We have that long time friend of the working man, Andrew Neill, presenting it. In the studio he calls upon business experts, well versed as they are in Socialism, and outside at Bournemouth (but not in the conference hall) we have an assortment of union leaders and other pundits airing their wisdom. And while we are given a brief glimpse of the hall, heaven forbid that we should be allowed to hear what "real people" actually say.

It wasn't like that in the "old days" when we had real conferences with resolutions from constituencies and union branches being debated fully. This was democracy at its best, when you felt that there was real pressure on the executive. Each time I watched I learned something new.

Now, the only voices we hear are the party leaders parroting their rhetoric. I shall take my Quells and struggle through a few more hours of it but I will prophecy now that I will not hear a word about the European Constitution; the mass sell-off of council houses and care homes; the obscenity of nuclear weapons, or the recently-held, obscene arms fairs. Why? Because that is what concerns "real people", not this media triviality which reduced politics to one of personalities and the irrelevance of who might be the next leader of the Labour Party.

JIM HOMEWOOD, Rectory Green, Prestwich.