AINSLIE Casson is not the only one round here with a master's degree (The Bolton News, September 14). I’ve got one as well (with Distinction), though I don’t often wave it around. Like Mr Casson, I used local libraries as well as my university's library in pursuit of my studies.

I disagree with the suggestion that Bolton Council is acting in pursuit of dogma when it refuses to allow volunteers to staff libraries. There is more to operating a library than just handing our dollops of Mills and Boon and library services, no less than any other, demand the use of trained professionals and somewhere in Scripture it is asserted that the labourer is worthy of his hire.

Arguably the Government has a mandate to reduce public spending, though whether the last election would have gone precisely the way it did had the electorate realised how much the coalition would adopt slash and burn principles to the delivery of public services is a matter for conjecture.

It has long been the case that the Great British Public expects to receive Pullman Class service for Economy Class prices.

But to replace paid professionals by unpaid volunteers would, in industrial relations terms, be rightly seen as provocative in the extreme.

Peter Johnston Kendal Road Bolton