Wrong-headed view of a skewed election

In your comprehensive leader (5 May) you say that, in Alex Salmond, "a major player was excluded from a process which has dictated the entire campaign. That cannot be right."

Aside from the fact that Mr Salmond was included in the process within his own wider constituency (Scotland), there are three much more important factors of the democratic process that cannot be right.

The first is that Holyrood essentially spends "the block grant handed down from the Treasury and has no say over how it raises its cash", ie power without responsibility, described by Kipling and Baldwin as "the prerogative of the harlot throughout history".

The second is that devolution was prematurely enacted and in a form which totally ignored the West Lothian Question, with all its constitutional and undemocratic implications. Maybe Tam Dalyell of the Binns and Bookcases might justify our paying for the latter by continuing this campaign in his well-earned retirement.

The third is the combination of Scottish over-representation at Westminster with 59 MPs and the huge discrepancy in constituency populations, from 22,000 in the Western Isles to 110,000 in the Isle of Wight.

Akin to the rotten boroughs more than 200 years ago, these give a built-in disadvantage to the Conservative Party of more than 5 per cent of the UK vote.

That these unnecessary anomalies have continued for so long, despite devolution and with modern communications, is itself a democratic outrage.

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park

St Andrews

As a resident of a three-way marginal seat I have been the joyful recipient of several trees' worth of election literature. What terrible reflections of our political process: bar charts where the bars bear little resemblance to the actual figures; heroic leaps of logic in claiming that selecting their party is "the only way" to achieve certain goals.

I received two more examples yesterday: a Scottish Labour leaflet talking about its approach to cancer and the NHS, and a Scottish Liberal Democrat one pledging "more police on our streets".

If these people were asleep throughout the period 1997–99 then I apologise, but did nobody tell them about devolution?

Or do they just think it is fair to assume that I am constitutionally illiterate?

C HEGARTY

Braidburn Terrace

Edinburgh