Was I alone in finding Alan Bacon's attempt (Letters, September 14) to use the horror of New York to bolster his support for an elected mayor more than a little tasteless?

Yes, I am a supporter of the No campaign and I expect I was not the only one who spent last Tuesday evening anxiously checking up on relatives and friends who work in Manhatten.

It is surely the case whichever form of municipal government a city has matters very little when something as massive in scale and horror as this occurs. It's the brave work of public-sector workers, supported by the voluntary efforts of local people, that is actually making a difference in New York.

This terrible event has a lot to do with the grave imbalance of power and wealth in our world. Many in the third world will share our sense of horror, if only because it has happened to them too, although their suffering is so much more distant to us, usually in the form of satellite photographs or blips on a bomber pilot's radar screen.

One can only imagine what kind of desperation it is that makes young men, presumably with families of their own, want to kill so many innocent people and themselves in the process.

We are living in very dangerous times - who knows what new conflagration the US military might unleash in vengeance and how many new suicide bombers will then be recruited? One thing is clear - the deaths of thousands of innocent people must not be used as justification for the deaths of thousands more.

-Andy Richards, Woodhouse Road, Hove