MADAM — I must take issue with Carol Kambites.

She talks of the similarities between Labour and Conservatives and I just wonder if this is an early attempt to stop potential Green voters from voting for David Drew.

I am not one of those who argue that a Green (or now a Ukip) vote is a wasted one.

People have a right to vote for whom they want to and I welcome the Green Party’s involvement in the democratic process.

However, Mrs Kambites knows that the acts by the Conservatives from 2010 in so many areas, and particularly with regard to the NHS, are much more damaging than the small amount of privatisation by the Labour party, which I and many others in the party strongly attacked.

She also knows that the shadow health secretary has pledged to repeal the bill that the Conservatives brought in to privatise the NHS.

And has she forgotten the introduction of the minimum wage, children centres (which is now being gradually taking apart) and many other initiatives that the Labour party brought in and which the Conservative government opposed?

Of course the last government made mistakes, of course we should never have gone into Iraq, but I wonder if the Green administration in Brighton has been the model of good government. I think not.

Mrs Kambites said in a previous letter that the Green Party is the only party to support comprehensive schools.

May I ask her then how many Green supporters sent their children to a grammar school?

May I ask her if she has ever supported grammar schools?

All my children went to comprehensives because my wife, Carole, and I believe in the comprehensive ethos.

It would have been hypocritical to do otherwise.

I am not sure that the Greens hold the moral high ground.

Some others share that sacred turf and to talk of the two main parties as being the same, she knows is simply nonsense.

When the two main parties bring out their manifestos, I am willing to sit down with her and compare them and see whether she is right or not.

Until then, may I suggest that she refrains from attacking Labour, and turn her ire on those who would really damage our country, the Tories and Ukip, who I see are trying to form an alliance with the Greens. Wow.

Brian Oosthuysen

Stroud