Obviously, Joan Ryan is already pulling out all the stops to ensure she is returned to parliament next year. She certainly is astute and ready to make capital at every opportunity.

The article in your newspaper (‘Malicious lies’, Enfield Independent, November 5) surely hardly helps – it was not the underlining/resurrecting of the expenses overclaim scandal she was objecting to, but the implication that she herself was the one to erase that entry from Wikipedia – not that erasing it denies it happened of course – rather “qui s’excuse, s’accuse...”.

Nor can she erase the decisive part she played, when an MP, in launching the start of Chase Farm Hospital’s downward spiral, when she campaigned so hard, relentlessly and subsequently to link Chase Farm to Barnet and its huge debt for rebuilding and refurbishment, totally disregarding the enormous local majority’s wishes.

The campaign to save and improve our once magnificent hospital, despite so many rallies, marches and enormous efforts, sadly could not overcome. (I remember it when the staff accommodation was top of the range with leisure facilities on tap – swimming pool, tennis courts, etc.) But Josie O’Ware summed it all up so clearly and succinctly in her excellent letter (‘No right to publicly condemn others’, Opinion, 18 December, 2013).

B. Gleeson

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