As I looked at the array of letters about the directly- elected mayor (Opinion Extra, February 21), two words leapt out.
One occurs in the letter that it took 28 people to write, a collaboration which made for something even woollier than the effort by Lord Bassam, perpetrator of the other word.
This "overwhelming majority of Labour councillors" declares it believes "strongly" in a hasty referendum. Belief, surely, is an absolute. Either one believes in something or one doesn't. To say that one believes strongly must make others question the nature of that belief.
As for Lord Bassam's sneer about an "oddball" alliance of councillors, this sits oddly with the council's habit of proclaiming the city's virtue is that it is quirky - or any other such adjective from the thesaurus that is "the Simon Fanshawe book of words" (as Denis Christian neatly puts it).
-Christopher Hawtree, Westbourne Gardens, Hove
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