I AM curious. A couple of weeks ago a colleague of mine in the Labour party, Mr Ray Hill, had a devastating letter published in your newspaper. Devastating for the Green party, that is. A deafening silence has been their reply.

Mr Hill stated a number of what he claimed were facts. In short, he said that the Greens had been consistently wrong in their analysis of major environmental issues over the years.

He wrote that when they called themselves, 'the Ecology Party' in the 1970s they had openly stated, as a fact, that the world would run out of oil in 30 years time and if we did not all 'adapt' we would see the end of civilisation as we know it early in the new millennium.

He said that, again in the 1970s, they had openly argued that we would soon all be blighted by a 'coming new ice age' (no 'global warming' then).

He alleged that they advocated 'deliberately created traffic jams' that could only result in the pumping of even more poison into our atmosphere.

He also pointed out that the self-styled 'environmentalists' had a history of being wrong that went back centuries.

He related amusing anecdotes about predictions that London would be buried under 10 feet of horse manure by the year 1900 and about Oliver Cromwell's reaction to 'prototype Green lunacy.'

I myself have posed many direct quotations to the Green party, all of which have been either avoided or deliberately mis-understood. Have they ever, anywhere, as a political party, supported the building of a new road?

Come on you Greens. Answer Mr Hill's direct allegations with direct answers. And please answer my question, too, or could it be that you are too busy formulating your next policy initiative? Speed humps every 25 yards down the M6, maybe?

Richard Newman-Thompson

Prospect Street

Lancaster