Letter: Political nous of a spellchecker

Sir: My PC's outdated spellchecker (it fails to recognise "consultancy" or "privatise", so it is obviously pre-Eighties) also plays tricks with people's names. It will of course ignore names that exist as normal words, but shows remarkable insight when it gets to politicians' true identity.

With the latest Cabinet split I discovered that John Major was changed to a grey and feeble "Join Major". However, Stephen Dorrell turns into a double Eurosceptic rallying call: "Stiffen, Derail!" I could not possibly comment on other cabinet members such as "Mutual Coward", but I have no doubt that the party chairman would prefer "Brawn Money" to "Brown Moony".

As for the leaders of the Opposition, it merely confirms what we knew all along: Tony Blair becomes "Tons Bluer" and Paddy Ashdown "Badly Outdone".

BADLY PUNY (PADDY PAYNE)

London SW4