I DO hope you will allow me one more exchange with BR Saunders in a final effort to get someone connected with the local Conservative party to answer my very simple question: why can't we have a local man as our Tory candidate for the next general election?

Mr Saunders (or should it be Mrs? he/she seems to know quite a bit about buying handbags) suggests that I am homophobic - not so; I don't care two hoots what Ms James and her lesbian partner get up to in the privacy of their own bedroom, neither am I opposed to private education or people making millions out of lobbying for drug companies.

Put that lot together though and anyone with any intelligence has to ask what on earth such a person has in common with the vast majority of the population of Stourbridge?

My own answer to that question is nothing at all' but maybe that's the problem with David Cameron's A list? His dogged determination to fill his front benches and private office with old Etonians and others of that ilk suggests little understanding of the likes of us.

I decline the invitation to join the Tory Party (I'm with Groucho Marx where clubs are concerned) but firmly believe they are repeating the mistake made in 2005 when we had a Tory candidate from Slough - she entertained us with her poetry and her video but she hadn't the faintest idea about Stourbridge or Stourbridge people.

In the two years since the last election Lynda Waltho has, I have to admit, made a pretty good job of representing us in Parliament and has become an MP of some stature. A local Tory could compete with her, I say again, why can't we have a local man as our candidate?

R Bartlett Stourbridge