• SO Siân Berry is to step down as a Camden councillor to concentrate on getting elected to parliament in Brighton, (A privilege, the most rewarding job of my life, October 19).

This will cost Camden £30,000 in an unwanted election. It will costs her £10,500 a year in lost earnings.

However she is not standing down from her main London politics job. She sits on the London Assembly (as a London-wide list member) where she is paid £60,416.

Surely London takes up more time? If she was working so hard for Highgate, and forced to quit, it makes you wonder how much she is actually doing for London.

So all her platitudes about being sad at having to leave it appears to be driven by how much she is paid, rather than which takes up so much time.

If she is truly dedicated to Brighton she could have quit the Greater London Authority. It would have freed up more time and not caused a by-election as the job would have passed to the next on the list, a person called Benali Hamdache.

No fuss, no need for crocodile tears in the CNJ and no £30 000 bill for the residents of Camden. But she is a Green so she can surely have no avaricious side?

DAVID DOUGLAS
Agent Hampstead & Highgate Conservatives