WE SHOULD be grateful to Gary Flakes (Letters, February 14) for the valuable information he provides regarding foreign nationals languishing in British jails.

Only 14 per cent of the total of 85,000? Well that’s all right then: only 12,000 people being kept at enormous expense to the British taxpayer.

It’s not as if we had anything better to spend money on, is it?

Any more interesting statistics, Gary?

Maureen Hockley, Barbara Grove, Holgate, York.

• I WOULD like to take issue with Ben Tanguay (Letters, February 16) and his comments about David Cameron’s Big Society, in particular his reference to the responsibility for “cuts in funding” and “this smoke-and-mirrors scheme”.

It’s a bit rich for a Labour candidate to be complaining about smoke and mirrors after the previous Labour government practised these political dark arts to a level never before experienced.

I seem to recall among many examples, including the infamous “a good day to bury bad news”.

As for cuts in funding, it beggars belief that already Labour members and supporters are trying to shift responsibility for their toxic economic legacy.

Let us consider a few facts of the Blair/Brown economic and social legacy.

Gold reserves sold off at the bottom of the market, false proclamations lauding the “economic miracle” of financial service markets and an unsustainable property boom, uncontrolled mass immigration, a slavish adherence to all EEC directives, and a denial of a promised referendum.

Add to this the mess of a once-revered educational system and the rape of pension funds, it is hard to envisage a bigger mess.

Martin Smith, Main Street,