NICK Bent’s rant about Helen Jones is the most spiteful letter I have ever read in a newspaper (Warrington Guardian, December 29).

We all know what an MP earns and that each MP is entitled to use salaried staff so his reference to what Helen Jones and Mike Vobe earn is completely irrelevant.

The fact that Paul Taylor is a volunteer and a member of the Labour party is also irrelevant – it does not put him above criticism.

In my experience every MP has both friends and enemies in any constituency party but it is simply untrue to say that ‘so many Labour members’ want to deselect Helen Jones. She was overwhelmingly reselected last year by the membership and repaid their trust by increasing the local Labour vote at the last election when it went down in the rest of the country.

The trail of unsubstantiated halftruths that she ‘has not bothered’ to meet the libraries’ councillor, refused to meet the previous crime commissioner and never bothers to meet the council leader are just meaningless and near-libellous slurs.

Cheapest and nastiest of all is the smear about ‘the tawdry little book’.

The only person smeared by that disgraceful letter is Nick Bent.

This is not to say I support Helen Jones’s refusal to meet with LiveWire – conversation is always better than confrontation.

Anyway I do not see what the opening and closing of libraries has to do with either MP, it is solely a matter for the councillors we have elected to run the town (and who in my opinion run it very well) who will, hopefully, take account of the views of the townsfolk about where financial cuts should be made.

DR MICHAEL MURPHY Longbarn