LABOUR'S wishy-washy Heritage Minister's attempt to make his mark over the Camelot directors' bonuses demonstrates the party's time-honoured policy of political envy over success.

If it is the people's lottery, as he proclaims, why does he not make efforts to return the 15 per cent of lottery money that his government takes in tax and which dramatically reduces the money paid to good causes and the punters themselves?

Then we have the feeble Chancellor, who did not have the guts to manage interest rates himself and passed the buck - so that when they go up, someone else carries the can. This is a childish concept to avoid the blame, but is doomed to failure in the long term.

We also have John Prescott's cockeyed scheme to get us all on public transport. He has a better chance of winning the lottery. And Tony Blair demands that single parents should all get jobs - 800,000 of them - as Tommy Cooper would have said: 'Just like that!' Then he jets to Europe and sets about our downtrodden EU partners, telling them to create jobs.

Why not start in his own backyard where there are 1.5 million people wanting jobs, or, as Labour would have had us believe before the election, 3.5 million without work?

WALT MEADOWS, Whalley New Road, Blackburn.

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