E. TEBBS' criticism of the wanton and unnecessary £500 million which was spent on a meeting to discuss cancelling Third World debts, which appears to have achieved little, is valid. Unfortunately this is but one of many such extravagances with our money.

£761 million was spent on the failure called The Dome. The Millennium would have been more humanely celebrated if January 2000 had started with this country having no homeless people, no medical waiting lists, and without an increasing crime rate.

Governments of both parties preach that we should save fuel and drive less, yet ministers make unnecessary journeys in expensive, gas-guzzling cars. They spend millions on unnecessary advisers, quangos and bureaucrats to investigate bureaucrats, while at the same time claiming not to be able to afford more than an insulting 75p rise to pensioners who, in their working lives, contributed the taxes.

The obscenity of this waste is obvious to all, including those entitled to add MP to their signatures and to represent us.

Why do they not rise up from their back benches and condemn these malpractices? Or, at some point in their political careers, does ambition and expediency take priority over humane compassion and common sense?

R. DEARDEN,

Bury Old Road,

Prestwich.