about "Jane", the supermarket checkout woman and Mrs Thornton, the woman who, slaving away in a private care home as I once did, was blinded by bleach.

I was moved to tears as I was reminded of the days I didn't have enough money to buy a loaf of supermarket bread to feed my children. Such experiences cannot fail to have an enormous effect on a person.

It must be incredibly difficult to understand the problems most poor people face if you've never been poor yourself.

I was brought up by my mother (a single parent) who, it later transpired, suffered from multiple sclerosis.

As a child, I often wondered why she didn't work. Now I work as a nurse and understand MS is so debilitating sufferers are worn out by just a few hours work.

One reason, of course, most politicians come from privileged backgrounds is they have time to engage in political debate.

backgrounds who have a say in how our city and, in the wider context, our country are run.

I no longer work in the rest home where, as a young mother desperate to feed her children, I scrubbed tiles in a tiny toilet for £2 per hour (in 1990). Now, with the introduction of a minimum wage, such exploitation is at least more difficult.

I have become a local politician myself and will stand as a Labour Party candidate for North Portslade in the local council elections in 2007.

few, are sound.

So you don't have to be a toff to get into politics. I haven't met Jean Calder but perhaps I will one day and I look forward to showing her not every politician lives in a different world.

-Nicole Murphy, Gladstone Road, Portslad