SOCIALISM was mortally wounded by Maggie Thatcher some time ago. Tony Blair and Co are now doing a good undertaker's job.

Cabinet ministers who exercise socialist principles, both in their parliamentary and private lives, are as rare as hen's teeth.

They have apparently, and not before time, managed to extricate themselves from the permafrost of socialist dogma.

Many Labourites will claim that the Prime Minister has forsaken and betrayed the Labour Party.

Others will say that he is doing that which he was elected to do; that he is not and never was a socialist.

He is a marginally less severe Thatcherite than the original model. It is now abundantly clear that the "nanny" state is doomed and the "gimme, gimme" culture has to be pruned and, if necessary, culled.

They who still wear the blinkers of idealism and continue to dream of a socialist Utopia must now recognise that universal benefits payments cannot continue.

The mythical socialist cornucopia will not give out goodies for ever and ever, it will become empty - skint!

There is nothing wrong with dreaming of a better world, but the bottom line is that we have to face facts.

RAYMOND NICHOLSON, View Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.