Letter: Wasted vote

The referendum on Alternative Vote gets closer by the day (your reports). But I will abstain and I urge others to do likewise. The reason is: whichever way the vote goes, it will perpetuate a system where we have to pay a myriad of supernumerary representatives in the Palace of Westminster.

In the two houses on Capitol Hill, America has 535 elected senators and representatives. The UK has one-fifth the population of the US, so pro rata we should have 107 members in our equivalent houses: say 72 in the Commons, 35 in the Lords. Instead of which we have an astonishing 1,442 members - 650 in the Commons, and 792 in the Lords, more than 13 times the US rate. Thus, to vote yay or nay, is just perpetuating a nonsensical drain on the nation's resources.

DAI WOOSNAM

Woodrow Park

Scartho, Grimsby