MY attention was drawn by my wife to the down-to-earth and pertinent comments of columnist Sharon Griffiths regarding the resignation of Hazel Blears (Echo, June 10).

My lip curled, too, when I read the front pages with Ms Blears declaring that she was resigning as Communities Secretary and would now concentrate on helping her constituents – presumably as opposed to helping herself.

It is amazing how the media can forget her recent transgressions when it suits them, in its obsession with hounding the Prime Minister.

It is regrettable that well-balanced comment, such as Sharon’s, is apparently no longer in the modern journalistic tradition, now demonstrated by fellow columnist Peter Mullen as in, for example, his recent unbalanced diatribe on global warming (Echo, June 9).

It is difficult to understand how a man who professes to be a follower of Christ can regularly promulgate such uncharitable and blinkered arguments – until, of course, you reach the bottom of the page, where we are advised that he is chaplain to the Stock Exchange. And we all know which god the City worships.

Why don’t you give his column to Sharon, and give the readers a break?

R Allan Bell, Darlington.