Letter: PR disaster

Sir: I went to vote in the European Parliament election and was handed a paper with a lot of names under a row of hieroglyphs. The ladies on the desk assured me: "You only have to put one X in one box as usual."

I haven't being paying attention; I really thought we were going to be allowed to exercise our faculties for once, to make real choices. At the look on my face, the polling officer smirked: "That's proportional representation for you!"

Truly, I felt my blood boil - and Enid Lakeman, the indomitable campaigner for electoral reform, turn in her grave.

For there was nothing proportional in what voters were being asked to do - a blanket approval of just one party, with no ability to choose between different candidates. We might as well have been voting for a herd of cows.

When will our politicians stop treating us like village idiots and allow us to exercise some subtlety and discrimination?

PATRICIA GRAHAM

Tonbridge, Kent