TTHEY say in politics you can't please all the people all the time. I reckon our election specials this week and last, with the first full details of who romped home and who got chucked out, were winners.

But not for Tim Clarke, chairman of Sompting Liberal Democrats, who sent us a grizzling missive under his e-mail handle of TimboClark.

Straight off, we'll put our hands up to two tiny mistakes you spotted, Mr Clarke. Yes, at Sompting, Cokeham North we incorrectly marked Daniel Yates as a sitting councillor and Barry Mear as a Liberal Democrat when he is Labour.

Mr Clarke says we marked him as a sitting councillor, too. Technically wrong because he transferred from Sompting, Peverel South where he was sitting councillor to Peverel North where he lives and was elected. Right, that's that extremely fine split hair sorted.

He hasn't finished. Why did we not provide results for Peverel South and Cokeham South where there were no contests? Simple. Adur Council did not see fit to supply us with that information.

There's more. Why did so many of our parish election results not have political parties listed after councillors' names? Easy, Mr Clarke, and as a councillor yourself surely you haven't forgotten that many of your parish colleagues stand for themselves and do not feel the need to parade a party banner or label themselves as independents.

Finally, he grumbles, the page of pictures in our four-page special on the parish council results included a photograph of Trevor Webb, victorious for Labour in Silverhill ward at Hastings in the district council poll. You're being picky, Mr Clarke. As the headline clearly said, that picture and others on the page gave a flavour of all the local elections held the previous Thursday.

You let rip at us and say we should not have made any mistakes with our parish council results since we had taken since Thursday to produce the supplement for Monday. Actually, Mr Clarke, the results weren't made available to us until Friday afternoon and Adur was one of the very last to do so.

Whinge away, Timbo, but I salute my colleagues who worked tirelessly through Thursday night and late into Friday evening to put together dozens and dozens of election results.

It was a marathon effort, with more than 170 councils and 2,000-plus candidates. And the full results of the district elections were out on the streets in the Argus on Friday before most folk had even finished breakfast.

That puts us first past the post by a massive majority, don't you think?

Finally, my apologies to children at Downs Junior School in Brighton. Last week we printed this picture of them during their mini-workout in aid of Help The Aged, but the caption underneath wrongly said they were from West Blatchington Juniors.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.