Though having withdrawn from the election contest and temporarily in France, TV allows me to see what is happening.

The Presidential-style Cameron/Millband debate seems to me to make all the local party candidates irrelevant and increases my anxiety that voters will be seduced by one or two issues, whether it be hunting repeal for the local Tories or saving the NHS for many others and surrender their vote accordingly and find that they get the rest of the manifesto “package” without realising what is in it.

Having read your summaries of the candidates’ policies, they are so similar that it seems to amount to a case of “divide and rule”.

Instead of the local people choosing one local candidate to represent them independently, from the bottom up, so to speak, they are forced to choose between party nominees with already preconceived packages decided by some anonymous group “up there”.

Since Ryedale is a Tory stronghold, I refer to the proposed Bill of Rights (“Protecting Human Rights in the UK”) in their manifesto package which seeks to grant rights to the people.

If you understand the English concept of rights or liberties, (the ancient freedom of the individual to accept or reject one policy at a time – which is not dependent on the will of the government) the Tory proposals would seem to gladden the heart of any Stalinist regime it is so oppressive to English liberty in that at every sentence under Qualified Rights (p2) the state has the power to nullify your choice of actions.

The document also describes the ECHR as “entirely sensible statement of principles” – oh yes?

Martin Cruttwell, Scrayingham