From Mr Richard Gordon, QC

Sir: Stephen Laudat is a schizophrenic who stabbed his fellow inmate 82 times at a day centre in Newham. Relatively isolated incidents such as this inevitably make national headlines, as do the inquiries that always follow.
The Woodley report, sensible so far as it goes, points to inadequate funding for the mentally ill True but, as the philosophers say, uninteresting. I have been removed as the candidate simply because I am on the left of the Labour Party.Yours sincerely,Liz DaviesLondon, N128 September. All who have been reselected have been endorsed by the NEC without qualms.Mr Sawyer’s inaccurate assertions are meant to hide the real reason for my non-endorsement. From Ms Liz Davies

Sir: Tom Sawyer, Labour’s general secretary, says I am not a “suitable” candidate for Labour – even though I was democratically selected in accordance with the party rulebook – because I broke the whip as an Islington councillor on “numerous occasions” (“Labour split after left-wing candidate is forced out”, 28 September).
As I made clear to the National Executive Committee on Monday, the fact is that I have broken the whip on Islington Council precisely two times in my five-and-a-half years as a Labour councillor.Since the general election of 1992, more than 100 sitting Labour MPs have broken the parliamentary whip at least once.

Coronation Street.” I rather doubt Rupert Murdoch will be “given” anything; but if rights holders wish to sell, who will stop them? And who will then compensate them for their losses?Yours faithfully,David ElsteinHead of Programming, BSkyBBritish Sky BroadcastingIsleworth, Middlesex26 September. Or is it suggested that high-quality television is not allowed to appear on non-terrestrial channels?”Sky would fill up most of its time on most of its channels with American trash.” Do the words “American” and “trash” go together automatically? Are all the American series on Channel 4 and the BBC “trash”? If a channel such as Sky One can achieve a rating close to BBC 2’s in satellite/cable homes, is it to be assumed that the audience is unable to detect “trash”?”It would be monstrous to give Rupert Murdoch sole rights over great national institutions – Wimbledon, the Cup Final, the service at the Cenotaph … From Mr David Elstein

Sir: Would you allow a little factual light to penetrate Roy Hattersley’s uncharacteristic gloom (“Not up Rupert’s Street”, 25 September) [about the consequences of Sky seeking to buy Coronation Street]? “Poach”, “predators”, “pirates”, “plunder”: all very alliterative, but since when are rights holders (who decide these matters) forbidden to decide where to display their programmes?
“High-quality television should be available to all for the price of the licence fee alone” – well, that’s the BBC’s responsibility. As the Smiths, Waterstones and Dillons of this world are not in business for love, you may be sure that the latter option will be chosen.

Sadly, however, the publisher also needs to make his profit, so he will be forced to raise the price to, say, pounds 17.99 and give a 40 per cent discount, which equals pounds 10.80 to the book dealer.Who benefits from a pounds l5.99 book, repriced to pounds 17.99, being offered as a bargain at pounds 2 off?The losers are the independent bookshops who cannot demand larger discounts from the publishers, and their customers, who have to pay the extra pounds 2.The only way to save the good independent bookshop is to borrow the bestsellers from the public library and to support those shops and publishers who still subscribe to the Net Book Agreement.Yours faithfully,Ian WilkesRomford, Essex26 September. With the Net Book Agreement in its apparent death throes, the bookshop has the choice of either lowering its profit figure or demanding a higher discount. From Mr Ian Wilkes

Sir: There is no such thing as a “bargain” book. All that the largest publishers and the multiple bookshops are doing is simply to admit that most “bestsellers” were overpriced in the first place.
If, for example, a book with a realistically arrived at price of pounds 15.99 is sold by a publisher to a book outlet at 35 per cent discount, the cost to the bookshop is pounds 10.40, giving a “profit” of pounds 5.59. If both parties abandon principle, what hope for Britain?Yours faithfully,Jeremy FoxUniversity of East AngliaNorwich28 September. But what about the rest of us? Labour’s decision means that both main parties want us to abandon several million of our citizens, from whom we have been making billions of pounds’ profit for more than a century. From Dr Jeremy D Fox

Sir: Chris Patten, Governor of Hong Kong, has recommended that we give British passports to Hong Kong citizens.