YOUR Pulse pages last week seemed to be a party political broadcast on behalf of Nigel Evans. What on earth has Nigel hob-nobbing with the likes of The Spice Girls (right) got to do with the vibrant music scene in East Lancashire, a scene that used to dominate your Pulse columns and that Nigel has conspicuously failed to take an interest in?

During the last six years there have been open-air contemporary music events held in Clitheroe, mainly at the Castle bandstand, but one year at Low Moor, I, along with our former Ribble Valley MP Michael Carr, have organised some of these. Nigel Evans has not even shown up to watch any of them.

To describe Mr Evans as the closest thing to a Conservative 'Yoof' campaigner highlights the lack of any real interest in youth by the Conservative Party.

If Nigel Evans wants people to believe that he really is interested in youth issues he is going to have to do better than this. He insults people's intelligence if he thinks that young people are going to be impressed by his transparent liking for The Spice Girls, following their vacuous remarks about Mrs Thatcher.

As for your Pulse column, let's have it back to how it used to be - a bit less about established stars - they don't need Pulse.

COUN JOHN McGOWAN (Lib Dem), Whitewell Drive, Clitheroe.

FOOTNOTE: We regularly carry out readership research and this has shown us that while people still want us to cover the local music scene in Pulse, they also want items of more general interest. Just because you don't agree with the politics of Nigel Evans does not mean we should not carry an article about him in our popular music column. - Editor.

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