To: Editor Washington Post From: Neil Winton Jim Hoagland-You Cannot Be Serious About Voting For Blair? Your columnist Jim Hoagland is an incompetent journalist who doesn't trouble to do his homework, if his column "One Yank's Endorsement" (Wall Street Journal Europe, May 3) is anything to go by. He urges Britons to vote for a Blairite regime which has debased our politics, and ruined many aspects of our life. Americans wouldn't stand for it, that's for sure. He shows a woeful ignorance of life in Blair's Britain. The "remarkable economic boom", based on Tory years of progress dating back from Margaret Thatcher is about to implode, according to such eminent forecasters as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Ernst & Young. Hoagland says the Conservative party is divided on Europe. That is not so, but it's true of the governing Labour party. Blair's Labour Party has - *trashed the private pensions system, once envied across Europe, * raised taxes to outrageous levels and lied about its plans * lied to Parliament to justify our involvement with the U.S. in Iraq (which I support), * trashed the voting system with an ill-judged, insecure postal voting plan, * trashed the constitution by hobbling the second chamber and failing to come with a replacement plan, * indulged in class war by banning fox hunting, * created nearly 1 million jobs in the public sector, wasting vast sums of money, * the civil service has been undermined, and a culture of spin and lying is now the norm, * the Welfare State, which Tony Blair promised to reform in 1997, is out of control, * State controlled health care is further away than ever from delivering standards common in the U.S., * Education, state controlled like in the U.S., gets worse every year, *Transport is in chaos. Speed cameras entrap the innocent and hand out outrageous, over-the-top penalties. In short, the Blair years have been counterproductive in almost every way. The only achievement? The government eschewed control of interest rates and allowed our equivalent of your Federal Reserve to take over. If Jim Hoagland wants to write an interesting story, why doesn't he jump on a plane and come over here to see how what was once thought of as a well-educated, civilised society, could possibly be about to vote for more of Blair and his Labour party of fools, dissemblers and incompetents? Regards Neil Top