PETE Winstanley’s understandable concern that the General Election is being degraded to the level of a TV talent contest (HAS, March 1) prompts me to recall the main thrust of Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves To Death (1985).

The American academic wrote that TV was more likely to prove Aldous Huxley more accurate about the fate of mankind than George Orwell. Orwell thought government would control our thought processes, while Huxley believed that we would create our own spiritual prison via entertainment.

Postman wrote: “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk.”

Interestingly, in his book, America, Alistair Cooke asked where that nation stood in the Seventies. He referred to the increasing obsession with sex, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the inability to draw a distinction not only between enthusiasm and talent, but between freakishness and creativeness – just some of the factors leading to the decline of previous cultures. And all of which are now close to home.

Ken Fox, Aycliffe Village, Co Durham.