DAVID Lacey (HAS, Sept 12) expressed support for the jingoistic and imperialistic sentiments which I knew would be expressed at the BBC Last Night of the Proms concert in Centre Square, Middlesbrough, and for that reason I did not join in an event which otherwise gave me pleasure, that is, some prominence to a town in my area which usually attracts unwelcome bad publicity.

I am no great supporter of Gordon Brown because I see him as a most inappropriate leader of the Labour Party, but it is an overstatement by Mr Lacey to describe him as a man who intends to consign our freedoms to the dustbin of history.

Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.