IN answer to Phil Ashcroft (Bolton Evening News, March 19).

I have never argued, nor do I believe, that the amount of money distributed to local councils should depend on whether they are Labour or Tory-controlled.

I have said, and now repeat, that more money should be made available to those councils, predominantly in the industrial North, which have the largest concentration of problems. Yes, of course there are poor and badly paid people in south Buckinghamshire, south Leicestershire, and Richmond and Twickenham, just as there are rich and well paid people. But you do not have to look at the socio-economic profile for these areas long to realise that there are far fewer poor people, and far more rich people (still!), in the leafy South-east than there are in Bradford, Burnley or Bolton. "From each, according to their ability to pay, to each, according to their need", still seems to me to be a morally defensible philosophy for determining how Government money is spent. Your correspondent is, of course, at liberty to disagree, but then the Conservative Party always was, and still is, supremely the party which sanctifies greed.

Yes, of course, we need new blood in politics. We always did. But we also need a certain discipline in the way we use language and ideas. In truth, there are well-run Labour authorities, as well as badly run ones, and generously resourced Conservative authorities, as well as stingy ones.

Bolton, by most standards, is well run, and it is a matter of history that this is as much due to the Conservative administration which set up the new Metropolitan authority in 1973 as it is to the Labour administrations which have run the town since 1980. It is a commonplace in local government finance that, for any ambitious finance officer, to have in your cv some working experience in Bolton MBC will stand you in good stead. That should tell you something about the quality of our financial management as an authority.

Peter Johnston

Kendal Road

Bolton