FURTHER to my letter of May 13, I have received more minutes of the Tory Party, this time for April 1, 2009, not long after the global financial crash.

The topic of discussion was downbeat as the Osbourne-Cameron axis had supported the Brown Government’s activities to protect this country from the crisis. However, it was suggested that there was political mileage to be made if they, the Tory opposition, blamed the resultant recession on the then labour Government. And so history became written.

Not that Gordon Brown saved the economy and ensured money still flowed from the ATMs, but that Labour had crashed the economy. This mantra was repeated for the ensuing election and for the most recent one. The men in grey suits resolved to persuade their press baron friends to say this loud and often. Consequently, when the public were asked why they supported the Tories, they dutifully responded what they had been fed.

I suppose this reflects the old adage: Throw enough mud and some will stick. After all, I would have thought that most people are opposed to food banks, zero hour contracts and cuts to public services and yet when Ed Milliband says these things he is too ‘left wing’.

This style of manipulation of the public has already been started by the new Government. They dislike the impartiality and indepth research that the BBC conducts. Having tried to silence them over the last five years by a licence fee freeze, unshackled by any Lib-Dem opposition around the cabinet, they are now to emasculate the world-respected organisation for the sake of party ends.

They will do this by, over the coming months, denigrating the BBC and saying it is over staffed and too lefty, without any shred of evidence to support their views. Consequently the public will support a cut in its fees from just under £3 a week, less than a couple to have coffee.

These examples serve to show that it wasn’t the detail of the Government’s policies that won them the vote but their manipulation of the reporting of events and their supporters in the press. With boundary changes about to cement the Tory party in power for many years to come we should perhaps get used to this style.

BOB PIXTON Abney Moor Liden Swindon